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THE  CRIMES 

OF  THE  "TIMES" 

ATest  of  Newspaper  Decency 

By 

UPTON  SINCLAIR 


Can  a  great  newspaper  publish  lies,  and  refuse  to 
correct  them? 

Can  it  accuse  a  man  of  grave  offenses,  and  refuse 
to  publish  the  facts  he  offers  in  his  own  behalf  ? 

Can  it  publicly  call  for  evidence,  and  suppress  the 
evidence  when  it  is  furnished? 

Can  a  great  newspaper  quote  from  a  letter  which  it 
refuses  to  publish,  and  misquote  the  letter,  and  refuse 
ani  correction  ? 

Ren  a  professor  of  journalism  in  a  great  university 
>ofn  such  a  procedure? 

;aci  this  little  story  of  the  New  York  "Times"  and 

^-.  James  Melvin  Lee,  Director  of  the  Department 

of  Journalism  in  the  New  York  University,  and  see 

what  you  think  of  their  ideals  of  fair  play  and  truth. 


If  ever  you  have  read  a  book  of  mine  and 
found  help  from  it—  if  ever  my  work  has 
me^nt  anything  to  you  —  I  ask  you  to  pay 
me  now  by  doing  me  a  favor,  which  is  to 
read  this  pamphlet,  and  help  to  circulate  it, 
and  expose  the  worst  piece  of  newspaper 
dishonesty  which  I  have  witnessed  in  a  long 
while. 

UPTON  SINCLAIR. 


.  ^Li 


This  pamphlet  is  published  by  Upton 
Sinclair,  Pasadena,  California 

NEW  YORK  OFFICE  : 
3  East  14th  Street 

CHICAGO  AGENCY : 

Economy  Book  Co.,  33-35  So.  Clark  St., 
Chicago,  111. 

Price  lOc  per  copy,  15  copies  for  $1.00,  100  cop^  u 
for  $5.00 

Read  it,  pass  it  about  and  educate  your  friends 


The  Crimes  of  the  "Times 


This  is  a  story  of  a  powerful  and  wealthy  newspaper  hav 
ing  enormous  influence.  For  thirty  years  this  newspaper  has 
stood  before  the  American  public  as  the  embodiment  of  all 
things  respectable  and  august.  A  quarter  of  a  million  Amer 
icans  buy  it  every  day,  and  form  their  whole  view  of  life  from 
its  columns.  And  never  a  day  out  of  more  than  ten  thousand 
days  that  this  newspaper  has  not  subtly  and  cunningly  distorted 
the  news  of  the  world  in  the  interest  of  special  privilege. 

Upton  Sinclair  wrote  a  book  to  prove  this.  He  did  not 
rely  on  his  own  say  so,  or  on  any  other  man's ;  he  gave  facts — 
448  pages  of  them,  closely  packed.  He  published  this  book 
himself,  because  nobody  else  had  the  nerve.  He  was  told  by 
Samuel  Untermyer  that  if  the  book  was  not  true  there  were 
fifty  indictments  for  criminal  libel  in  it,  and  a  thousand  civil 
suits. 

The  book  has  been  before  the  public  for  a  year,  and  more 
than  125,000  copies  have  been  sold.  A  carload  of  brown 
wrapping  paper  had  to  be  bought,  because  the  paper  trust 
would  not  sell  book  paper.  The  book  has  been  or  is  being 
published  in  Great  Britain,  France,  Germany,  Belgium,  Hol 
land,  Norway,  Sweden,  Denmark,  Italy,  Argentina  and  Japan. 
Yet  all  this  time  the  "New  York  Times  Review  of  Books," 
which  purports  to  give  the  news  of  the  literary  world,  has 
never  mentioned  the  name  of  "The  Brass  Check."  Not  even 
in  the  advertising  columns — a  check  for  $156.80  was  returned! 

But  everybody  is  reading  the  book,  even  the  newspaper 
men,  and  the  "Times"  had  to  do  something.  A  champion  was 
selected,  Prof.  James  Melvin  Lee,  who  got  his  training  in 
journalistic  ethics  on  the  staff  of  "Leslie's,"  the  barber-shop 
weekly,  and  is  now  Director  of  Journalism  in  New  York  Uni 
versity.  Professor  Lee  appeared  before  the  Brownsville  Labor 
Forum  and  delivered  an  address,  "The  Fallacies  of  'The  Brass 
Check/  "  and  the  New  York  "Times,"  carefully  provided  in 
advance  with  clippings  and  quotations,  published  an  account 
of  the  lecture  in  two  columns,  opposite  the  editorial  page — 
"preferred  position." 

The  lecture  was  a  call  for  facts,  a  challenge  to  produce 
them.  The  author  of  "The  Brass  Check"  had  the  facts ;  so  he 
sent  them  to  the  New  York  "Times"  in  a  letter,  not  so  long 
as  the  "Times'  "  story  of  Professor  Lee's  lecture.  In  this 
pamphlet  you  will  see  what  happened;  and  please  note  that 
we  gives  both  ^sii^a.  ^j We?  do  not  suppress  Professor  Lee's 

O 


indictment,  and  give  merely  our  own  defense.     We  did  not 
learn  our  ethics  in  a  great  state  university! 

We  are  used  to  the  New  York  "Times" — we  know  it  for 
what  it  is,  an  organ  of  special  privilege.  But  we  object  to 
men  holding  a  position  of  public  trust,  in  a  public  institution, 
and  pretending  to  serve  the  public  welfare,  but  in  reality 
serving  organized  greed.  Therefore  we  intend  to  smoke  out 
this  professor.  We  are  printing  this  record  of  his  silence  in 
the  face  of  a  piece  of  dastardly  foul  play;  we  are  sending  a 
copy  of  it  by  mail  to  every  student  in  the  university  where  he 
teaches.  And  we  intend  to  do  this,  year  after  year,  so  long 
as  he  lives.  Never  again  will  he  talk  about  fair  play  on  the 
part  of  capitalist  newspapers  to  a  class  of  guileless  boys  and 
girls  who  think  he  really  means  it! 

(From  the  New  York  "Times,"  February  28,  1921.) 
DR.  LEE  ATTACKS  "THE  BRASS  CHECK" 

UPTON   SINCLAIR  ACCUSED  OF  FALSIFYING  ABOUT   THE   CONDUCT 
OF    NEWSPAPERS 

CALLS  FOR  A  SINGLE  PROOF 

RADICALS   IN  AUDIENCE   UNABLE  TO  GIVE  ONE  INSTANCE  OF 
ADVERTISERS'  CONTROL  OF  PRESS 

Dr.  James  Melvin  Lee,  Director  of  the  Department  of 
Journalism  of  New  York  University,  spoke  yesterday  on  "The 
Fallacies  of  the  Brass  Check"  at  the  public  forum  in  the 
Brownsville  Labor  Lyceum. 

He  denied  a  number  of  the  specific  charges  in  Upton  Sin 
clair's  book,  "The  Brass  Check,"  which  purports  to  be  an 
exposure  of  the  American  press.  Dr.  Lee  said  that  he  was 
seeking  to  go  over  "The  Brass  Check"  statement  by  statement, 
in  order  to  verify  or  disprove  Sinclair's  assertions.  He  dis 
cussed  several  cases  in  which  he  had  obtained  evidence  against 
the  truth  of  the  novelist's  statements  and  other  cases  in  which 
he  considered  that  the  statements  bore  evidence  of  falsity  on 
their  face.  He  complained  that  a  great  number  of  the  writer's 
accusations  did  not  furnish  names,  dates  or  other  facts  by 
which  they  could  be  tested. 

Dr.  Lee  also  took  up  a  charge  made  by  George  Creel  that 
American  newspapers  were  under  the  control  of  department 
stores  in  every  city  in  the  United  States  large  enough  to  have 
a  department  store.  After  an  elaborate  discussion  of  this 
theory  he  challenged  his  audience  and  the  public  generally  to 
produce  evidence  of  a  single  case  in  which  a  New  York  news 
paper  had  suppressed  an  item  of  news  at  the  behest  of  an 
advertiser.  He  said  that  he  had  endeavored  to  run  down 
various  charges  of  this  nature,  but  that  on  investigation  they 
had  invariably  proved  to  be  false, 

4 


CITES  SINCLAIR'S  HOAX 

Dr.  Lee  began  by  asserting  that  Sinclair  was  not  entitled 
to  belief  for  any  of  his  unsupported  assertions,  because  he  had 
already  fooled  the  public  once  in  his  famous  hoax,  "The 
Journal  of  Arthur  Sterling."  Dr.  Lee  quoted  the  following 
from  an  article  entitled  "My  Cause,"  written  by  Sinclair  in 
The  Independent  of  May  14,  1903 : 

"I  knew  that  the  hoax  would  cost  me  my  reputation  and 
the  respect  of  all  decent  people,  but  that  did  not  matter,  for  I 
have  not  been  favored  with  the  acquaintance  of  many  decent 
people  and  am  not  obliged  to  hear  what  the  world  thinks  of  me. 
Besides  I  would  have  cheerfully  robbed  a  bank  or  sandbagged 
a  millionaire,  had  my  task  been  possible  in  no  other  way.  My 
only  desire  was  to  raise  a  sensation,  first  to  sell  my  book,  of 
course,  and  second,  to  give  me  a  standing  ground  from  which 
to  begin  the  agitation  of  my  cause." 

After  reading  this  Dr.  Lee  continued : 

"Now  there  you  have  a  self -confession  on  the  part  of  the 
author  that  he  has  deceived  you.  He  seems  to  take  a  certain 
amount  of  pride  in  that  fact.  Now  I  submit,  purely  as  a 
matter  of  logic,  that  a  man  who  has  deceived  you  must  come 
forward  with  very  positive  proofs  if  he  wishes  further  state 
ments  of  his  to  be  accepted." 

One  of  the  statements  regarding  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES 
which  Dr.  Lee  proceeded  to  discuss  occurs  on  page  77  of  "The 
Brass  Check,"  where  the  author  asserts  that  preparations  had 
been  made  to  print  "a  three  or  four  column  story"  about  his 
novel,  "The  Metropolis,"  on  the  front  page  of  THE  TIMES, 
but  that  it  was  discovered  and  "killed"  at  1  o'clock  in  the 
morning  by  the  publisher.  "The  Metropolis"  purported  to 
be  an  exposure  of  high  society.  Dr.  Lee  quoted  the  following 
from  "The  Brass  Check" : 

"It  was  not  so  bad  for  Upton  Sinclair  to  attack  a  great 
industry  in  Chicago,  but  when  it  came  to  the  sacred  divinities 
of  New  York,  that  was  another  matter.  The  story  was  'killed' ; 
and,  incidentally,  Upton  Sinclair  was  forbidden  ever  again  to 
be  featured  by  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES.  The  law  laid  down 
that  night  was  enforced  for  twelve  years." 

"Now  I  would  like  to  ask  you,"  said  Dr.  Lee,  "if  you  have 
ever  seen  a  quotation  from  a  novel  made  a  front  page  article 
for  a  New  York  paper.  I  leave  it  to  you  whether  any  New 
York  paper  would  print  a  piece  of  fiction  on  the  front  page. 
The  nearest  thing  I  ever  saw  to  it  was  a  book  review  on  the 
front  page  of  The  Evening  Post,  and  that  was  a  book  which 
was  attracting  a  great  deal  of  news  interest." 

STORY  OF  PACKERS'  EXPOSURE 

Dr.  Lee  read  from  the  chapter  in  which  Mr.  Sinclair  tells 
of  obtaining  the  views  of  the  commissioners  named  by  Presi- 

5 


dent  Roosevelt  to  investigate  the  packing  industry  after  the 
exposure  in  "The  Jungle."  He  said  that  the  commissioners 
gave  him  the  substance  of  their  report  with  a  tacit  understand 
ing  that  he  would  publish  it.  He  says  that  he  offered  it  in 
vain  to  the  Associated  Press.  Mr.  Lee  then  read  Sinclair's 
account  of  his  visit  to  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES  : 

"I  arrived  about  10  o'clock  at  night,  having  wasted  the 
day  waiting  upon  The  Associated  Press.  I  was  received  by 
the  Managing  Editor  of  THE  TIMES — and  never  before  or 
since  have  I  met  such  a  welcome  in  a  newspaper  office,  I  told 
them  that  I  had  the  entire  substance  of  the  confidential  report 
of  Roosevelt's  investigating  committee,  and  they  gave  me  a 
private  room  and  two  expert  stenographers,  and  I  talked  for 
a  few  minutes  to  one  stenographer  and  then  for  a  few  minutes 
to  the  other  stenographer,  and  so  the  story  was  dashed  off 
in  about  an  hour. 

"Knowing  THE  TIMES  as  I  have  come  to  know  it,  I  have 
often  wondered  if  they  would  have  published  the  story  if 
they  had  had  twenty-four  hours  to  think  and  to  be  interviewed 
by  representatives  of  the  packers.  But  they  didn't  have  twenty- 
four  hours ;  they  only  had  two  hours.  They  were  caught  in  a 
whirlwind  of  excitement,  and  at  1  o'clock  in  the  morning  my 
story  was  Cn  the  press,  occupying  a  part  of  the  front  page 
and  practically  all  of  the  second  page. 

"The  question  had  been  raised  as  to  how  the  story  could 
be  authenticated.  THE  TIMES  met,  the  problem  by  putting  the 
story  under  a  Washington  'date  line' — that  is,  they  told  their 
readers  that  one  of  their  clever  correspondents  in  the  capital 
had  achieved  the  'scoop.'  Being  new  to  the  newspaper  game, 
I  was  surprised  at  this,  but  I  have  since  observed  that  it  is  a 
regular  trick  of  newspapers." 

SINCLAIR'S  CRITICISM  ANSWERED 

Dr.  Lee  said  that  he  had  investigated  this  matter  and  had 
looked  up  the  files  of  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES. 

"I  hold  no  brief  for  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES,"  he  said.  "If 
THE  TIMES  did  take  a  story  which  originated  here  in  New 
York  and  put  a  Washington  date  line  on  it,  it  is  open  to  very 
severe  criticism.  It  is  not  good  newspaper  ethics.  There  is 
no  question  about  it.  But  let  us  investigate  Sinclair's  own 
statement.  He  had  been  in  Washington,  had  obtained  the 
information  there  and  came  to  New  York  by  train.  Now, 
does  it  make  any  difference  whether  this  matter  came  by  wire, 
as  most  of  it  does,  or  by  mail,  as  some  of  it  does,  or  by  a 
man  getting  on  a  train  and  coming  to  New  York?  It  is  a 
perfectly  legitimate  Washington  story,  even  though  it  be 
written  here  in  New  York." 

Branching  off  to  George  Creel's  charge  that  newspapers 
are  universally  dominated  by  department  stores,  Dr.  Lee  said 


that  he  had  written  to  the  leading  newspaper  publishers  of  the 
country  asking  them  if  they  could  furnish  proofs  of  their 
independence  and  that  he  had  received  a  stack  of  letters  three 
feet  high,  containing  evidence  in  disproof  of  the  charge. 

"The  charge  that  certain  Philadelphia  newspapers  have  sup 
pressed  news  in  order  not  to  offend  certain  department  stores 
is  true,"  rTr%aid.  "There  is  no  doubt  about  that,  and  these 
newspapers  will  suffer  for  decades  to  come  from  the  loss  of 
prestige  involved  in  sacrificing  themselves  to  advertisers." 

Such  suppression,  he  said,  had  not  only  been  cowardice 
and  bad  ethics,  but  bad  policy  both  for  the  newspapers  and 
the  department  stores.  He  said  that  the  stories,  because  of 
their  suppression  from  print,  had  been  repeated  by  word  of 
mouth  against  the  advertisers  and  against  the  newspapers, 
until  they  had  attained  a  vast  circulation  and  had  lived  on 
long  after  they  would  normally  have  been  forgotten. 

DEFENDS    NEW    YORK    NEWSPAPERS 

"But  I  would  like,"  he  continued,  "to  have  you  show  me 
one  case  where  the  department  stores  of  New  York  City  have 
ever  kept  a  single  item  out  of  the  New  York  papers.  I  would 
like  to  have  you  show  me  one  case." 

Dr.  Lee  said  that  he  got  an  intimate  knowledge  on  this 
subject  when  New  York  University  established  a  selling  school 
with  the  co-operation  of  nearly  all  the  large  department  stores 
in  the  city.  These  stores,  he  said,  employed  new  salesmen 
and  saleswomen  in  the  store  for  half  the  day  and  sent  them 
to  the  school  for  the  other  half. 

"Wouldn't  you  think,"  he  continued,  "that  it  would  be  easy 
for  the  department  stores  to  get  publicity  about  this  school? 
But  the  representatives  of  the  department  stores  sent  me  this 
word : 

"  'If  you  want  any  publicity  for  this  school,  put  it  out  on 
your  own  stationery,  because  we  can't  get  the  newspapers  to 
print  anything  of  this  kind  for  us.  This  school,  for  one  of  its 
importance,  has  received  less  publicity  than  any  school  in 
the  city/ 

"I  once  asked  Mr.  Straus  of  Macy  &  Co.  if  he  had  ever 
made  any  requests  on  the  newspapers.  He  said  yes.  There 
was  a  murder  in  the  dining-room  there,  a  very  disagreeable 
thing. 

[<  'I  didn't  ask  them  to  suppress  it/  he  said.  'I  asked  them 
not  to  mention  our  store  any  more  than  was  strictly  necessary 
—to  put  a  soft  pedal  on  it.' 

PUT  STORE'S  NAME  IN  HEADLINES 
"I  asked  him  what  happened.     He  replied : 
1  'They  put  it  in  the  headlines.     I  learned  my  lesson  then. 
I   would  have  fared  a  good  deal  better  if   I   had  asked  no 
favors/ 

7 


"I  would  like  to  have  the  people  who  say  the  department 
stores  control  the  newspapers  come  forward  with  their  facts. 
The  newspapers  don't  depend  on  the  department  stores."  In 
support  of  this  statement  Mr.  Lee  cited  some  figures  of  news 
paper  income. 

Dr.  Lee  asserted  that  a  delegation  of  book  publishers,  who 
were  trying  to  keep  the  price  of  books  at  $1.50  some  years 
ago,  called  on  the  publisher  of  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES  and 
announced  that  they  would  withdraw  their  advertising  if  THE 
TIMES  did  not  cease  publishing  the  advertisements  of  depart 
ment  stores  who  sold  the  books  at  $1.05.  The  delegation,  he 
said,  got  this  reply: 

"If  the  fact  that  you  can  get  these  $1.50  books  for  $1.05 
was  not  printed  as  an  advertisement  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES 
would  print  it  as  news." 

Abraham  I.  Shiplakoff,  the  Socialist  alderman,  rose  on  the 
floor  and  made  some  general  charges  against  the  press,  alleg 
ing  that  everyone  knew  the  papers  were  the  tools  of  the  adver 
tisers. 

"Give  me  one  instance,"  said  Mr.  Lee. 

"There  are  so  many  that  it  is  impossible  to  pick  out  one," 
said  Mr.  Shiplakoff. 

"That's  what  they  all  say,"  said  Dr.  Lee.  "All  I  ask  for 
is  one  instance  where  the  fact  can  be  definitely  traced  and 
established.  Give  me  one." 

Mr.  Shiplakoff  hesitated  and  then  said  that  a  girl  had  been 
mysteriously  killed  in  a  Brooklyn  department  store  under  cir 
cumstances  which  would  have  resulted  in  first-page  stories 
had  the  killing  occurred  elsewhere,  but  that  no  Brooklyn  news 
paper  printed  anything  about  it.  Several  others  of  the 
audience,  composed  mostly  of  radicals,  jumped  to  their  feet 
to  corroborate  this. 

DR.  LEE  CALLS  FOR  PROOF 

Dr.  Lee  called  in  vain  for  the  name  of  the  girl,  the  date  of 
the  occurrence  or  the  department  store  where  it  occurred. 

"If  you  can  find  out  more  about  it,  I  wish  you  would 
write  to  me,"  he  said.  "I  have  traced  many  such  statements 
but  never  found  any  truth  in  them." 

This  suppressed  Brooklyn  mystery  apparently  was  a  well- 
known  and  much  investigated  rumor,  which  has  been  thor 
oughly  proved  to  be  false.  It  was  whispered  about  for  weeks 
that  a  girl  had  been  attacked,  killed  and  hidden  in  a  Brooklyn 
department  store  and  that  the  press  and  authorities  were  in  a 
conspiracy  to  hush  it  up.  The  department  store  discovered 
by  the  falling  off  of  trade  that  something  was  wrong  and  dis 
covered  this  rumor.  The  district  attorney  and  grand  jury  and 
newspapers  were  invited  to  investigate.  The  grand  jury  found 
the  story  to  be  a  pure  canard. 

8 


After  the  Ruth  Cruger  murder  a  similar  tale  was  spread 
in  New  York,  the  scene  shifting  from  one  store  to  another 
and  finally  fixing  itself  on  an  American  shop,  which  was  driven 
out  of  business  by  constant  rumors  and  investigations. 

"Sinclair  is  known  to  be  a  sensationalist  and  an  egotist, 
and  a  man  who  parades  with  the  'Big  17,'  "  said  Mr.  Shipla- 
koff,  "but  he  is  a  muck-raker  trying  to  reform  a  bad  evil  in  this 
country,  and  in  other  countries.  I  am  surprised,  Dr.  Lee,  to 
find  a  man  of  your  intelligence  attempting  to  defend  it." 

Dr.  Lee  again  called  for  a  specific  case.  Mr.  Shiplakoff 
went  on  to  specify.  He  said  that  when  he  ran  for  the 
Assembly  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES  had  called  him  "the  indicted 
candidate"  after  the  indictment  against  him  had  been  quashed, 
and  had  otherwise  unfairly  attacked  him. 

"I  wrote  THE  TIMES  a  letter  about  it,"  he  went  on,  "and 
I  must  admit  that  they  printed  it.  But  I  don't  think  letters 
to  the  editor  are  as  widely  read  as  editorials." 

Half  a  dozen  persons  on  the  floor  quoted  from  attacks  in 
weekly  papers  on  Philadelphia  newspapers.  Dr.  Lee  asserted 
that,  with  the  watch  kept  by  weekly  papers  on  the  dailies,  it 
would  be  difficult  for  New  York  papers  to  suppress  news 
without  getting  caught  at  it  and  exposed.  He  offered  this  as 
evidence  that  no  such  thing  ever  took  place  here. 

DISCUSSES    CRITICISM    OF   RUSSIAN    NEWS 

Dr.  Lee  was  asked  for  his  opinion  of  the  supplements 
printed  by  The  New  Republic  criticizing  the  Russian  news  of 
the  past  three  years  in  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES. 

"How  do  you  get  news  from  Russia?"  he  said.  "Why 
doesn't  The  New  Republic  print  the  news  from  Russia?" 

He  asserted  that  the  Russian  censorship,  the  British  cen 
sorship,  the  size  of  Russia  and  changing  conditions  there,  the 
varying  views  of  different  witnesses,  made  it  difficult  to  get 
better  news  from  Russia  than  had  been  obtained.  He  said 
that  the  first  man  to  point  out  the  unreliability  of  news  from 
Russia  was  Melville  E.  Stone,  General  Manager  of  The  Asso 
ciated  Press,  in  an  address  at  the  Church  of  the  Ascension 
on  June  9,  1918. 

Dr.  Lee  took  up  a  number  of  Mr.  Sinclair's  criticisms  of 
The  Associated  Press,  especially  the  suppression  of  a  Sinclair 
statement  offered  to  the  news  service  during  the  Colorado 
strike.  Dr.  Lee  said  that  reasons  for  refusing  this  telegram 
included  the  fact  that  The  Associated  Press  excluded  opinions 
from  its  service;  that  the  statement  was  false;  that  it  was 
libelous  and  that  it  was  offered  by  Sinclair  for  self-advertising 
purposes.  He  said  that  the  night  manager  of  The  Associated 
Press,  who  refused  the  telegram,  was  a  former  city  editor  of 
The  New  York  Call. 

Regarding  other  attacks  on  the  Associated   Press  in  the 


Sinclair  book,  Dr.  Lee  quoted  the  challenge  of  General  Manager 
Stone  for  anyone  to  prove  that  the  news  service  had  ever  de 
clined  to  correct  an  error  of  its  own  making.  Dr.  Lee  said  that 
the  Associated  Press  had  been  attacked  for  not  correcting  other 
people's  errors  and  that  it  was  quite  within  its  rights  in  so  doing. 
He  delivered  a  general  eulogy  on  the  accuracy  and  fairness  of 
Associated  Press  news. 

SINCLAIR'S  REPLY 

March  5,  1921. 
Editor,  New  York  "Times." 

DEAR  SIR  : — Your  issue  of  Monday,  February  28th,  reached 
me  an  hour  or  two  ago.  I  note  in  it  a  two  column  account  of 
an  address  at  the  Brownsville  Labor  Forum  by  Prof.  James 
Melvin  Lee,  Director  of  the  Department  of  Journalism,  New 
York  University,  on  the  subject  of  "The  Fallacies  of  the 
Brass  Check."  I  trust  that  you  will  not  publish  a  call  for 
facts,  and  then  refuse  publication  to  the  facts  when  they  are 
produced.  Especially  I  trust  you  will  not  do  this  in  the  name 
of  journalistic  integrity ! 

I  was  not  present  at  Professor  Lee's  lecture.  I  have  noth 
ing  to  go  by  but  the  New  York  "Times"  account,  but  the  same 
is  true  of  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  in  New  York. 
According  to  this  account  Professor  Lee  challenged  "The 
Brass  Check"  on  the  ground  that  it  did  not  give  names,  places, 
and  dates.  He  again  and  again  demanded  specific  cases,  and 
apparently  no  one  in  the  audience  was  able  to  give  him  what 
he  asked  for;  no  one  in  the  audience  was  sufficiently  familiar 
with  "The  Brass  Check"  to  point  out  to  Professor  Lee,  as  I 
can  point  out  to  him,  that  in  every  single  case  where  he  calls 
for  exact  specifications,  there  are  not  one,  but  several  cases  in 
"The  Brass  Check"  in  which  his  demands  are  fully  and  com 
pletely  met.  I  am  moved  to  wonder,  was  Professor  Lee  re 
viewing  "The  Brass  Check,"  or  was  he  reviewing  the  Browns 
ville  audience  ?  From  beginning  to  end  of  his  lecture  on  "The 
Fallacies  of  the  Brass  Check"  he  ignores  great  masses  of  facts 
given  in  "The  Brass  Check,"  and  calls  upon  his  innocent 
audience  for  facts.  And  when  his  audience  does  not  cite  any, 
he  arrives  at  the  easy  conclusion  that  he  has  proven  "The 
Brass  Check"  fallacious !  And  then,  on  top  of  this,  the 
"Times"  account  states  that  "he  discussed  several  cases  in 
which  he  .had  obtained  evidence  against  the  truth  of  the 
novelist's  statements  and  other  cases  in  which  he  considered 
that  the  statements  bore  evidence  of  falsity  on  their  face." 
The  "Times"  proceeds  to  give  a  couple  of  the  latter  cases — but 
from  first  to  last  in  the  entire  two  columns  it  does  not  give 
one  particle  of  the  "evidence"  which  it  says  the  professor  says 
he  obtained! 

I  will  take  up  the  professor's  arguments  at  the  very  be- 

10 


ginning,  with  my  early  life.  When  I  was  twenty-two  years 
old  I  perpetrated  upon  the  world  a  literary  hoax,  "The  Journal 
of  Arthur  Stirling."  This  literary  hoax  injured  no  one  and 
amused  many.  It  was  along  the  lines  of  many  literary  hoaxes, 
dating  from  De  Foe  and  Chatterton  to  H.  G.  Wells.  Subse 
quently  I  published  in  the  "Independent"  a  wildly  humorous 
article,  rejoicing  over  this  hoax,  and  proclaiming  the  fact  that 
it  had  won  for  me  the  chance  to  write  my  next  book.  The 
professor  proceeds  to  cite  a  humorous  statement,  written  by 
a  youth  of  twenty-two,  that  he  "would  cheerfully  have  robbed 
a  bank  or  sandbagged  a  millionaire,"  taking  this  as  seriously 
meant,  and  giving  it  as  a  reason  why  no  one  should  believe  the 
perfectly  grave  facts  which  I  cite  in  the  448  pages  of  "The 
Brass  Check"  at  the  mature  age  of  forty-two. 

Next,  the  professor  quotes  the  story  as  told  in  "The  Brass 
Check,"  of  the  publication  of  "The  Metropolis,"  and  the  prepa 
ration  of  a  sensational  story  about  this  book  which  was  to  go 
into  the  New  York  "Times"  on  its  front  page,  and  was  "killed" 
by  the  publisher  of  the  New  York  "Times"  at  1  o'clock  on 
the  morning  of  publication.  To  this  Professor  Lee  makes 
answer,  "I  leave  it  to  you  whether  any  New  York  paper  would 
print  a  piece  of  fiction  on  the  front  page."  The  professor 
might  consider  this  an  adequate  argument,  but  surely  the 
New  York  "Times"  cannot  consider  it  such  an  argument; 
for,  as  it  happens,  the  New  York  "Times"  KNOWS.  I  hereby 
challenge  the  New  York  "Times,"  having  published  the  state 
ment  of  Professor  Lee,  to  publish  its  own  statement.  Was 
there,  or  was  there  not,  prepared  for  publication  in  the  New 
York  "Times"  in  the  fall  of  1907  a  three  column  article — 
not  a  piece  of  fiction,  of  course,  but  a  news  story  about  a 
piece  of  fiction  written  by  Upton  Sinclair,  dealing  with  New 
York  "high  society,"  and  about  to  be  published  by  MofTat, 
Yard  &  Co.? 

And  while  the  "Times"  is  investigating  the  matter,  I  will 
state  what  I  personally  know  about  it.  As  the  author  of  the 
book  in  question,  I  was  in  the  office  of  Moffat,  Yard  &  Co. 
when  their  publicity  man,  whose  name  I  now  forget,  came  in 
and  announced  that  he  had  made  the  arrangement  for  the 
publication  of  this  story  in  the  New  York  "Times."  I  helped 
to  get  together  the  data  for  the  proposed  story,  and  I  saw  the 
proof  of  portions  of  it,  as  scheduled  for  publication.  I  was 
told  it  was  to  appear  in  the  next  day's  paper.  I  looked  for  it, 
and  so  did  all  the  members  of  the  firm  look  for  it,  and  next 
morning  the  publicity  man  of  the  firm  told  me  the  story  which 
had  been  told  to  him  by  the  editor  of  the  New  York  "Times" 
who  had  the  matter  in  charge;  how  the  story  had  been  taken 
out  of  the  columns  of  the  New  York  "Times"  by  the  publisher, 
personally,  just  a  few  minutes  before  the  paper  went  to  press ; 
and  that  furthermore,  this  publisher  had  given  orders  that  the 

11 


name  of  Upton  Sinclair  was  never  again  to  be  featured  in 
the  New  York  "Times." 

Next,  Professor  Lee  discusses  my  experience  with  the  New 
York  "Times"  in  the  case  of  "The  Jungle"  and  the  series  of 
big  stories  which  I  gave  to  the  "Times,"  dealing  with  Roose 
velt's  investigations  in  the  Chicago  Stockyards.  The  professor 
quotes  my  statements  about  the  New  York  "Times"  putting 
this  information  under  a  Washington  date  line,  whereas  it  had 
all  been  dictated  in  the  New  York  "Times"  office  by  myself 
personally.  The  professor's  answer  is  that  it  was  a  perfectly 
honorable  thing  for  the  "Times"  to  put  a  Washington  date  line 
on  the  story,  because  I  had  come  from  Washington  with  the 
story.  The  professor  gives  that  argument,  and  the  New  York 
"Times"  gravely  publishes  it ;  and  now  I  will  ask,  what  does 
the  "Times"  wish  its  readers  to  conclude  from  that  publica 
tion?  Does  the  "Times"  ask  its  readers  to  believe  that  it 
never  under  any  circumstances  writes  stories  in  its  own  office 
and  puts  them  under  date  lines  of  other  cities?  Does  the 
"Times"  deny  my  statement  that  it  is  one  of  the  commonest 
newspaper  practices  for  newspapers  to  make  up  date  lines  to 
suit  themselves,  and  also  to  take  material  which  has  come  by 
mail,  and  give  it  dates  indicating  that  it  has  come  by  cable?* 

Next  comes  the  question  whether  any  New  York  news 
paper  ever  suppressed  any  news  at  the  behest  of  advertisers. 
Professor  Lee  is  very  emphatic  about  this.  He  insists  upon 
having  definite  cases ;  he  mentions  particularly  department 
stores,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  is  supposed  to  be 
reviewing  "The  Brass  Check,"  which  contains  cases,  giving 
names,  places,  and  dates.  There  are  cases  not  merely  in 
Philadelphia,  as  Professor  Lee  admits,  but  in  New  York,  Chi 
cago,  Kansas  City,  and  other  places.  The  professor  wants  to 
confine  himself  to  New  York,  and  so  I  refer  him  to  page  284 
of  "The  Brass  Check";  the  case  cited  by  Prof.  E.  A.  Ross 
of  the  prosecution  of  a  merchant  in  New  York  for  selling 
furs  under  false  names,  and  not  one  newspaper  cited  the 
circumstances.  Or  take  the  case  cited  by  Max  Sherover,  dur 
ing  the  strike  of  the  retail  clerk's  union ;  the  arrest  of  Miss 
Elizabeth  Dutcher  in  front  of  Stern's  Department  Store  at  the 
instigation  of  the  store  manager,  and  the  omission  of  the  name 
of  the  department  store  from  every  New  York  newspaper  but 
one.  Or  again,  take  the  case  cited  on  page  348,  upon  the 

*  In  order  to  avoid  making  this  letter  to  the  "Times"  too  long  for  publica 
tion,  the  following  detail  was  omitted:  Upton  Sinclair  did  not  go  directly  from 
Washington  to  the  New  York  "Times"  office,  _  as  implied,  without  warrant,  by 
Professor  Lee.  He  went  from  Washington  to  bis  home  in  Princeton,  New  Jersey, 
and  stayed  there  a  week  Before  going  to  New  York,  and  this  circumstance  was 
fully  known  to  all  the  editors  of  the  New  York  "Times,"  who  discussed  with 
him  the  efforts  their  Washington  correspondent  had  been  making  in  the  mean 
time  to  get  the  news.  Therefore,  even  admitting  Professor  Lee's  contention  that 
the  "Times"  was  justified  in  putting  "Washington"  over  the  story,  the  "Times" 
was  certainly  guilty  of  dating  the  story _  a  week  later  than  its  origin  in  Wash 
ington.  The  date  line,  though  correct  in  geography,  was  certainly  a  falsehood 
in  chronology. 

12 


authority  of  Professor  Ross,  the  refusal  of  the  New  York 
newspapers  to  publish  the  oppressive  contracts  which  these 
working  girls  were  required  to  sign  by  various  big  department 
stores.  Or,  more  significant  yet,  let  us  take  the  case  cited  on 
pages  320-322  of  "The  Brass  Check,"  concerning  the  hearings 
before  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  in  New  York 
City  early  in  1914,  dealing  with  the  claim  of  the  railroads  for 
higher  rates.  This  story  is  told  in  detail,  and  I  will  here  only 
give  the  briefest  possible  summary  of  it.  One  railroad  presi 
dent  after  another  testified  that  his  road  was  on  the  verge  of 
bankruptcy,  and  all  this  elaborate  testimony  was  featured  in 
the  New  York  newspapers,  including  the  New  York  "Times." 
Then  for  two  days  in  succession  appeared  Commissioner 
Thorne,  a  member  of  the  State  Railway  Commission  of  Iowa, 
presenting  exact  figures  to  prove  that  all  this  testimony  of 
Tthe  railroad  presidents  was  falsity  and  misrepresentation.  This 
^was  one  of  the  most  sensational  public  incidents  which  ever 
^happened  in  New  York  City,  and  the  New  York  newspapers, 
Including  the  New  York  "Times,"  suppressed  every  word  of 
fhis  testimony.  Does  Professor  Lee  not  know  that  the  New 
York  Central  and  the  Pennsylvania  railroads,  whose  false 
figures  Mr.  Thorne  exposed,  are  large  advertisers  in  the  New 
York  newspapers? 

The  professor  then  discusses  the  Russian  news  of  the  New 
York  "Times"  and  other  papers.  This  news  has  by  now  be 
come  the  scandal  of  the  world,  and  is  destined  to  become  the 
scandal  of  history.  I  have  not  the  space  to  discuss  it  here, 
but  can  only  refer  to  my  book,  and  to  Walter  Lippman's  sup 
plement  to  the  "New  Republic,"  August  4,  1920. 

The  professor  goes  on  to  discuss  the  Associated  Press,  and 
especially  its  suppression  of  the  news  which  I  offered  to  it  in 
Denver,  Colorado,  at  the  time  of  the  coal  strike  of  1914.  The 
professor  stoops  to  repeat  the  vulgar  statement  that  I  was 
offering  this  news  from  motive  of  self-advertisement,  despite 
the  fact  that  I  have  elaborately  explained  in  "The  Brass  Check" 
how  I  pointed  out  to  the  Associated  Press  representative  in 
Denver  that  he  might  handle  this  news  without  mentioning  my 
name,  or  without  any  reference  to  me  whatever. 

The  professor  furthermore  adds  that  my  statement  offered 
to  the  Associated  Press  was  false  and  libelous.  No  doubt  it 
was  libelous,  if  it  was  false;  but,  if  it  was  false,  why  has  the 
Associated  Press  never  in  all  these  seven  years  taken  any 
action  against  me  for  bringing  against  it  the  charges  of  willful 
suppression  of  the  truth?  The  news  in  question  had  to  do 
with  official  proceedings  in  the  State  Legislature,  and  I  brought 
to  the  Associated  Press  representative  and  laid  before  him  on 
his  desk  the  official  journal  of  the  proceedings,  showing  him 
how  he  had  falsified  the  news,  and  how  he  might  correct  it. 
When  I  first  gave  this  story  to  the  world  in  1914,  I  accused 

13 


the  Associated  Press  in  terms  which  were  deliberately  made, 
not  merely  libelous,  but  criminally  libelous  if  untrue;  that  is 
to  say,  I  used  the  same  language  which  had  been  used  by 
the  editors  of  the  "Masses,"  then  actually  under  indictment  for 
criminal  libel  at  the  instigation  of  the  Associated  Press.  Yet 
the  Associated  Press  has  never  taken  up  this  challenge,  and 
the  Associated  Press  has  allowed  me  to  circulate  "The  Brass 
Check". for  thirteen  months,  to  print  144,000  copies,  and  sell 
nearly  all  of  them,  and  it  has  yet  to  make  any  kind  of  move 
against  me.  It  has  never  dared  even  to  make  a  public  state 
ment  in  regard  to  this  issue. 

I  make  the  recommendation  that  the  managers  of  the  Asso 
ciated  Press  should  agree  among  themselves  as  to  what  story 
they  are  going  to  tell  about  this  matter.  Evidently  Professor 
Lee  has  consulted  somebody  and  got  a  statement,  because  he 
speaks  as  one  having  authority.  Yet,  only  the  other  day,  I 
received  a  letter  from  a  gentleman,  well  known  in  New  York 
journalism,  who  quarrels  with  me  concerning  "The  Brass 
Check,"  and  tells  me  he  knows  intimately  the  story  of  that 
Colorado  affair,  and  that  one  of  the  managers  of  the  Asso 
ciated  Press  assures  him  that  they  actually  discharged  their 
Denver  manager  because  of  that  affair  with  me,  and  that  they 
stated  to  this  manager  specifically  that  it  was  his  duty  to  have 
sent  out  an  official  story  on  the  authority  of  Senator  Helen 
Ring  Robinson,  the  member  of  the  Colorado  State  Senate, 
who  had  brought  out  in  the  senate  proceedings  the  particular 
piece  of  knavery  on  the  part  of  the  governor  of  Colorado, 
news  of  which  the  Associated  Press  suppressed  for  the  benefit 
of  the  Colorado  coal  operators. 

Finally  the  professor  tells  of  other  attacks  on  the  Asso 
ciated  Press,  and  he  quotes  the  magnificent-sounding  challenge 
of  Melville  E.  Stone,  general  manager  of  the  Associated  Press, 
"for  anyone  to  prove  that  the  news  service  had  ever  declined 
to  correct  an  error  of  its  own  making."  But  here  again  1  am 
amazed  at  Professor  Lee,  who  is  reviewing  "The  Brass  Check." 
Will  the  professor  be  so  good  as  to  turn  to  page  145  of  "The 
Brass  Check,"  and  note  how  the  Associated  Press  sent  broad 
cast  through  the  United  States  a  telegram  to  the  effect  that 
my  wife  had  been  arrested  in  front  of  26  Broadway  in  the 
course  of  our  demonstration  during  the  Colorado  coal  strike 
in  1914.  Every  New  York  newspaper  reporter  who  told  of 
that  case  knew  that  my  wife  was  not  even  on  the  scene  when 
the  arrests  took  place.  The  United  Press  sent  out  a  perfectly 
true  report  and  so  did  the  other  press  agencies.  The  Asso 
ciated  Press  alone  sent  the  false*  report.  A  correction  was 
sent  by  special  delivery  letter  to  the  Associated  Press  within 
half  an  hour  after  my  wife  learned  of  the  false  report.  Not 
only  was  no  correction  ever  made,  but  no  acknowledgment 
was  made  of  the  letter  or  of  several  subsequent  letters  by  my 

14 


wife.  I  have  the  copies  of  some  thirty  newspapers  which  pub 
lished  this  false  story,  collected  by  attorneys  who  urged  my 
wife  to  collect  damages  from  those  newspapers,  as  well  as 
from  the  Associated  Press.  These  copies  will  be  furnished  to 
Professor  Lee,  who  is  so  ardent  in  collecting  the  exact  facts 
in  these  matters. 

I  will  cite  another  case  from  "The  Brass  Check,"  also  as 
specific  as  anyone  could  ask.  It  is  found  on  page  328,  and 
has  to  do  with  Eugene  V.  Debs.  When  Debs  was  arrested, 
the  Associated  Press  sent  out  broadcast  a  dispatch  to  the  effect 
that  Debs  had  stated  he  would  cause  a  general  strike  to  force 
his  release.  This  interview  was  quoted  by  the  attorney-general 
as  a  reason  for  refusing  amnesty  to  Debs.  The  story  was  a 
pure  fabrication  and  the  attention  of  the  Associated  Press 
was  called  to  it,  but  no  correction  was  ever  published.  "The 
Brass  Check"  goes  on  to  quote  from  a  letter  written  to  the 
Associated  Press  by  Eugene  V.  Debs  in  1912,  mentioning  two 
other  specific  cases.  Professor  Lee  calls  for  cases  but  does 
not  appear  to  remember  what  he  reads  in  "The  Brass  Check." 

I  will  conclude  this  long  letter  by  asking  a  question  of 
Professor  Lee,  who  defends  the  New  York  "Times."  Will 
he  assert  that  the  New  York  "Times"  has  never  declined  to 
correct  an  error  of  its  own  making?  Or  will  the  New  York 
"Times"  itself  publish  such  a  challenge  and  publish  the  answer 
to  that  challenge?  If  so,  I  will  open  the  discussion  by  citing 
page  382  of  "The  Brass  Check,"  which  tells  how  the  "Times" 
published  a  letter  by  Prof.  Richard  Gottheil  of  Columbia  Uni 
versity,  denying  that  the  British  Government  had  ever  executed 
Hindu  revolutionists  deported  by  the  United  States  Govern 
ment  and  turned  over  to  the  charge  of  the  British  Government. 
Dr.  Robert  Morse  Lovett,  editor  of  the  "Dial,"  wrote  to  the 
New  York  "Times"  citing  case  after  case,  upon  British  official 
authority,  and  the  New  York  "Times"  refused  to  publish  this 
letter.  And  on  the  same  page  of  "The  Brass  Check"  I  cite  my 
own  experience  with  my  novel  "Jimmie  Higgins."  In  this 
case  the  New  York  "Times"  deliberately  altered,  without  my 
permission,  a  letter  of  mine  which  it  published,  and  refused 
me  the  right  to  mention  to  its  readers  the  fact  that  it  had,  in 
a  review  of  my  book,  called  for  my  prosecution  by  the  govern 
ment  for  making  statements  which  the  "Times"  itself  a  few 
months  later  in  a  leading  editorial  admitted  to  be  true. 

The  above  is  enough  for  one  letter.  I  will  wait  for  the 
"Times"  to  publish  this,  and  I  will  wait  to  see  if  Professor  Lee 
calls  for  more.  UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

March  5,  1921. 
Editor,  New  York  "Times." 

DEAR  SIR  : — I  send  you  herewith,  by  registered  mail,  a  reply 
to  Professor  Lee's  attack  upon  my  book.  I  am  sure  that  you 

IS 


cannot  deny  me  an  opportunity  to  reply  to  this  attack,  espe 
cially  when  I  have  so  many  definite  answers  to  make,  and  so 
many  facts  of  a  kind  for  which  the  professor  issues  a  challenge. 
I  request  you  to  decide  at  once  whether  you  will  publish 
this  letter,  and  let  me  know  your  decision,  whether  yes  or  no, 
by  wire  collect. 

Sincerely, 

UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

P.  S. — Please  note  that  this  letter  is  to  be  published  entire, 
and  without  alterations,  if  it  is  published  at  all.  I  don't  sup 
pose  that  you  censored  Professor  Lee's  criticisms  of  "The 
Brass  Check,"  and  I  prefer  not  to  have  you  censor  my  answer. 
The  answer  is  much  shorter  than  the  challenge. 

March  5,  1921. 
Prof.  James  Melvin  Lee, 

Department  of  Journalism, 
New  York  University. 

DEAR  SIR: — I  enclose  herewith  a  copy  of  a  letter  which  I 
have  written  to  the  New  York  "Times."  I  send  you  a  copy 
in  order  that  you  may  have  an  opportunity  to  satisfy  yourself 
concerning  the  fairness  of  New  York  journalism.  You  will 
admit,  I  think,  that  this  letter  is  reasonably  courteous  in  tone ; 
as  much  so  as  your  indictment  of  "The  Brass  Check."  Also 
you  cannot  deny  that  it  deals  with  facts  and  does  not  shirk  the 
issues  which  you  raise. 

I  think  that  I  am  entitled  to  have  my  reply  published  in 
the  New  York  "Times,"  and  I  solicit  your  good  offices  to 
indicate  to  the  New  York  "Times"  what  you  yourself  con 
sider  to  be  proper  ethics  in  this  delicate  matter.  You  are  en 
gaged  in  teaching  journalism  and  journalistic  ethics,  and  I 
shall  be  deeply  interested  to  see  your  ethics  applied,  both  by 
you  and  by  the  great  newspaper  whose  cause  you  come  for 
ward  to  defend. 

I  would  appreciate  the  courtesy,  if  as  soon  as  you  have 
taken  up  this  matter  with  the  New  York  "Times,"  and  obtained 
their  decision,  and  made  up  your  own  mind  concerning  the 
matter,  you  would  send  me  your  answer  by  night  letter,  col 
lect.  I  am  a  long  way  off,  and  naturally  I  do  not  like  to  delay 
and  let  this  matter  grow  cold. 

Sincerely, 

UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

No  response  being  received  to  these  letters,  the  following 
telegrams  were  sent : 

March  14,  1921. 
New  York  "Times." 

Request  courtesy  of  wire  at  my  expense  stating  if  you 
will  publish  my  letter. 

16 


March  15,  1921. 
New  York  "Times." 

Unless  you  wire  collect  will  assume  you  refuse  publish 
letter. 

UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

March  16,  1921. 
Prof.  James  Melvin  Lee, 

Director  Department  of  Journalism, 

New  York  University,  New  York. 

New  York  "Times"  refuses  publication  my  letter.  Am 
preparing  public  statement  concerning  issue.  Request  night 
letter  collect  will  you  demand  "Times"  publish  my  letter? 
Will  you  repudiate  defense  of  "Times"  as  fair  and  honorable 
newspaper  if  they  refuse  publication?  You  can  force  them 
publish  letter  if  you  will  take  determined  stand. 

UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

No  attention  to  any  of  the  above  telegrams  was  paid. 
As  a  further  test  of  the  "Times,"  the  following  letter  had 
been  written : 

March  7,  1921. 
Advertising  Department, 

New  York  "Times." 

DEAR  SIR  : — I  enclose  herewith  copy  of  an  advertise 
ment  of  "The  Brass  Check."  I  offered  this  advertisement 
to  you  nearly  a  year  ago  and  you  refused  to  publish  it,  but 
you  have  now  published  a  long  attack  upon  "The  Brass  Check," 
and  it  seems  to  me  hardly  possible  that  under  these  circum 
stances  you  will  refuse  me  an  opportunity  to  inform  your 
readers  through  your  advertising  columns  what  is  to  be  found 
in  the  book.  At  any  rate,  I  desire  to  make  a  test  of  your 
journalistic  policies,  and  I  therefore  tender  you  this  advertise 
ment  once  more.  The  advertisement  is  to  appear  in  your 
"Sunday  Review  of  Books"  at  the  earliest  possible  date.  I 
enclose  check  for  two  hundred  ($200)  dollars,  and  request 
as  large  an  advertisement  as  this  will  pay  for.  In  order  to 
preclude  the  possibility  of  question  as  to  the  validity  of  my 
check,  I  will  have  it  certified  by  my  bank. 

For  your  information,  permit  me  further  to  state  that  this 
same  advertisement  has  been  published  without  question  in 
the  New  York  "Herald,"  "Tribune,"  "Evening  Post"  and 
"Evening  Globe." 

Sincerely, 

UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

No  response  by  telegraph  being  received,  the  following 
telegram  was  sent: 

17 


Advertising  Department, 

New  York  "Times." 

Please  wire  collect  if  you  will  publish  "Brass  Check"  adver 
tisement. 

UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

No  response  to  this  was  received  by  wire.  But  the  cir 
cumstance  that  a  bank  draft  for  $200  had  been  enclosed  com 
pelled  a  reply  to  the  previous  letter.  The  draft  was  returned 
with  the  following  letter: 

THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES 
"All  the  News  Thafs  Fit  to  Print'' 

Times  Square,  New  York, 

March  14,  1921. 
Mr.  Upton  Sinclair, 
Pasadena,  California. 

DEAR  SIR: — Acknowledging  your  letter  of  March  7th,  we 
return  herewith  your  check  for  $200.     Your  advertisement  is 
unacceptable  for  publication  in  The  New  York  "Times." 
Very  truly  yours, 

THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES. 

(NOTE — The  advertisement  rejected  by  the  New  York 
"Times"  is  reproduced  on  the  back  page  of  this  pamphlet.) 

What  one  college  paper  thinks  of  Dr.  Lee  on  "The  Fallacies 
of  The  Brass  Check." 

(From  the  "Michigan  Daily:  Official  Newspaper  of  the 
University  of  Michigan,"  March  3,  1921.) 

CHECKING  UP  THE  BRASS  CHECK 

Significant  as  an  attempt,  though  a  belated  one,  to  answer 
the  sweeping  indictment  of  the  American  press  made  in  "The 
Brass  Check,"  the  recent  lecture  by  Dr.  James  Melvin  Lee, 
director  of  the  department  of  journalism  of  New  York  Uni 
versity,  is  disappointing  as  being  only  another  incomplete 
refutation  of  the  charges  made.  Instead  of  disposing  of  the 
accusations  once  for  all,  Dr.  Lee's  speech  only  emphasizes 
the  disturbing  fact  that  as  yet  no  adequate  answer  has  been 
made  by  the  press. 

To  date  American  journalists  have  usually  stopped  short 
after  disparaging  the  reliability  of  the  author  of  the  book. 
Some  few  have  gone  further  to  score  the  omission  of  names, 
dates,  and  other  information  by  which  the  accusations  could 
be  tested.  Others,  such  as  Dr.  Lee,  have  shed  light  on  some 
parts  of  the  question,  although  failing  to  bring  forth  con 
clusive  proof  vindicating  modern  American  journalism. 

18 


In  the  meantime  the  charges  are  gaining  wider  circulation 
daily  and  menacing  the  public's  faith  in  the  press.  Because 
they  are  so  slanderous  and  inclusive  the  fact  that  they  have 
never  been  scotched  approximates  an  admission  of  their  truth. 
At  the  present  time  the  accusations  have  gained  such  a  hearing 
that  regardless  of  their  source  they  cannot  be  disposed  of  as 
trivial  insults  that  will  be  forgotten  if  ignored. 

Should  any  of  them  be  true  there  is  no  doubt  that  their 
seriousness  might  be  greatly  mitigated  by  explanations  of  the 
attending  circumstances.  One  can  have  no  doubt  from  read 
ing  the  book  that  the  author  has  missed  few  opportunities  to 
use  his  material  to  create  the  most  startling  effect,  and  has  not 
gone  out  of  his  way  to  supply  information  opposed  to  his  case. 
In  this  connection  explanation  of  why  an  act  was  done  often 
gives  an  entirely  new  complexion  as  to  whether  or  not  it  was 
wrong.  For  instance,  some  of  the  alleged  suppressions  of 
news  cited  are  cases  of  personal  telegrams  which  the  Asso 
ciated  Press  does  not  make  a  practice  of  distributing  as  news. 

Scoffing  and  ignoring  the  charges  has  proved  a  failure. 
The  time  has  come  for  the  American  press  to  produce  a  com 
plete  and  conclusive  refutation  of  the  slander,  in  the  form  of 
an  exhaustive  review  of  "The  Brass  Check"  branding  its  in 
accuracies  and  setting  out  the  circumstances  in  each  case.  The 
public  is  entitled  to  an  explanation  and  the  cloud  will  not  be 
removed  from  American  journalism  until  each  falsehood  has 
been  nailed,  or  if  admitted  as  truth  proved  to  be  indicative  of 
a  past  condition  which  has  really  been  altered. 


SUPPLEMENT 

The  material  so  far  appearing  in  this  pamphlet  was  in 
type  and  about  to  go  to  press,  when  on  April  2d,  twenty- 
eight  days  after  I  had  written  to  the  New  York  "Times"  and 
to  Professor  Lee,  I  received  two  communications ;  first,  a  long 
letter  from  the  professor,  and  second,  a  marked  copy  of  the 
editorial  page  of  the  "Times"  for  March  29th,  containing  a 
discussion  of  my  rejected  letter  to  the  "Times,"  stating  the 
reason  of  the  "Times"  for  rejecting  it.  Professor  Lee's  letter 
was  dated  March  23d,  but  the  postmark  on  the  envelope  was 
"Hudson  Terminal  Station,  N.  Y.,  March  29th,  11  a.  m."— 
the  same  date  as  the  "Times"  editorial ;  and  this  struck  me  as 
peculiar.  I  had  mailed  to  some  magazines  in  New  York  a  full 
page  advertisement,  headed  "The  Crimes  of  the  'Times/ " 
announcing  my  intention  to  put  this  controversy  into  a  pam 
phlet,  and  mail  a  copy  to  every  student  of  the  New  York 
University  School  of  Journalism.  The  advertisement  was 
mailed  on  March  21st,  and  was  due  to  reach  the  magazines  on 
March  25th  or  26th.  Could  it  be  that  one  of  these  magazines 

19 


had  submitted  a  copy  of  the  advertisement  to  the  "Times  " 
or  to  Professor  Lee,  or  to  both ;  and  that  the  "Times,"  seeing 
I  was  going  to  get  my  side  of  the  story  printed  after  all,  had 
made  a  hasty  effort  to  spike  my  guns?  As  for  Professor 
Lee — could  it  possibly  be  that  a  respectable  professor  of  jour 
nalistic  ethics  would  write  a  letter  on  March  29th  and  instruct 
his  secretary  to  date  it  March  23d? 

I  sent  a  telegram  to  the  professor  as  follows : 

Pasadena,  April  2d. 

Before  answering  letter  I  request  courtesy  reply  by  wire  collect. 
When  you  wrote  this  letter,  did  you  know  I  was  about  to  publish  in 
liberal  press  full  page  advertisement  dealing  with  this  matter?  Was 
your  letter  written  March  23  as  dated  or  March  29  as  postmarked 
on  envelope? — UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

To  this  came  a  prompt  reply — the  first  sign  I  had  seen 
that  the  professor  knows  how  to  telegraph !  I  quote : 

Knew  nothing  of  advertisement.  Letter  written  on  day  dated. — 
JAMES  MELVIN  LEE. 

So  my  suspicions  were  groundless !  The  professor,  despite 
his  tardiness,  had  really  written  for  the  sake  of  courtesy  and 
fair  play,  and  not,  as  I  had  foully  suspected,  because  he  knew 
of  the  pamphlet  I  was  going  to  send  to  his  pupils !  I  felt 
quite  badly  about  having  misjudged  him.  But  a  few  minutes 
later  a  friend  came  in,  bringing  a  copy  of  the  New  York 
"Call"  for  March  26th ;  and  there  on  page  5  was  a  news  story, 
with  a  heading  two  columns  wide : 

SINCLAIR  PLANS  TO  OFFSET  LEE'S  BLOW  AT  BRASS  CHECK 

AUTHOR  TO   SEND   PROFESSOR'S   STUDENTS   COPY  OF   PAMPHLET 
REFUTING  ATTACK  ON   PRESS  EXPOSURES. 

So,  after  all,  there  was  a  chance  that  my  plan  to  publish 
a  pamphlet  had  had  something  to  do  with  the  professor's 
decision  to  answer  my  long-neglected  letter !  But  how  about 
the  date  on  this  letter?  Could  it  possibly  be  that  he  had  read 
the  "Call"  story  on  March  26th,  and  had  then  prepared  a  letter 
to  me,  mailing  it  March  29th,  with  the  date  of  March  23d ; 
and  that  then,  getting  my  telegram  April  2d,  asking  if  he  had 
heard  of  my  advertisement,  he  had  blandly  answered  "No" — 
and  keeping  a  discreet  silence  concerning  the  "Call"  article? 

What  were  the  chances  of  his  having  read  the  "Call" 
article?  You  will  note  his  statement  that  he  has  Socialist 
students  in  his  classes,  and  he  discusses  "The  Brass  Check" 
with  them,  and  he  gave  his  public  lecture  on  my  book  "as  a 
special  courtesy  to  one  of  them."  Can  any  imagination  picture 
the  Socialist  students  failing  to  take  this  story  to  their  pro- 

20 


fessor?     What  are  Socialist  students  for — save  to  carry  on 
the  class  struggle  with  their  professors  ?    I  telegraphed  again  : 

April  3d. 

Having  just  seen  the  New  York  "Call"  March  26th  obliged  to 
trouble  you  with  one  more  question.  Have  you  seen  this  article? 
Had  you  seen  it  before  mailing  letter?  If  you  care  to  state  why 
letter  written  March  23  bears  postmark  March  29  will  publish  explana 
tion  if  wired  immediately. — UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

To  this  telegram  there  was  no  reply.  What  conclusion 
is  to  be  drawn  from  the  silence  I  leave  to  the  reader.  I  now 
proceed  to  the  correspondence,  beginning  with  the  New  York 
"Times"  editorial  of  March  29,  1921 : 

FEW  WORDS,  BUT  ENOUGH 

Mr.  JAMES  MELVIN  LEE,  Director  of  the  Department  of  Journalism, 
New  York  University,  in  the  course  of  a  recent  public  address,  saw 
fit  to  expose  some  of  the  false  statements  of  "The  Brass  Check,"  a 
volume  in  which  Mr.  UPTON  SINCLAIR  represents  American  journalism 
as  it  appears  to  him  through  the  cracked  and  smoked  lenses  of 
spectacles  of  his  own  construction.  Mr.  SINCLAIR  now  asks  THE  TIMES 
to  give  space  to  some  thousands  of  words  in  reply  to  Mr.  LEE. 

We  have  examined  carefully  Mr.  LEE'S  address  and  Mr.  SINCLAIR'S 
reply.  In  relation  to  matters  of  which  we  have  knowledge  we  find 
that  Mr.  LEE  speaks  the  truth  and  that  Mr.  SINCLAIR  does  not.  A 
single  example  will  suffice.  One  of  Mr.  SINCLAIR'S  tales  in  "The 
Brass  Check,"  disputed  by  Mr.  LEE  in  his  address,  concerned  THE 
NEW  YORK  TIMES.  It  represented  that  the  publisher  of  THE  TIMES 
"happened  in  [at  THE  TIMES  office]  at  1  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and 
discovered  a  three  or  four  column  story  about  The  Metropolis'  [a 
book  of  Mr.  Sinclair's]  on  the  front  page  of  THE  TIMES.  .  .  .  .  The 
story  was  killed ;  and  incidentally  UPTON  SINCLAIR  was  forbidden  ever 
again  to  be  featured  by  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES."  Mr.  SINCLAIR  recurs' 
to  this  tale  in  his  letter  to  THE  TIMES,  with  a  shifting  of  ground. 
For  his  own  positive  statement  in  "The  Brass  Check"  he  now  sub 
stitutes  the  alleged  statement  of  the  "publicity  agent"  of  a  publishing 
house,  whose  name  he  has  forgotten  after  the  lapse  of  fourteen  years. 
It  appears  that  the  "publicity  agent"  told  Mr.  SINCLAIR  he  had  ar 
ranged  for  the  publication  of  a  "story"  about  "The  Metropolis"  in 
THE  TIMES,  and  that  when  it  failed  to  appear  the  "publicity  agent" 
explained  that  "the  story  had  been  taken  out  of  the  columns  of 
THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES  by  the  publisher  personally,  just  a  few  minutes 
before  the  paper  went  to  press." 

In  every  particular  Mr.  SINCLAIR'S  statement  in  "The  Brass  Check" 
is  false.  No  such  incident  ever  occurred,  and  the  evidence  he  now 
pretends  to  offer  is  obviously  not  evidence  at  all.  Had  the  incident 
thus  falsely  described  ever  occurred,  it  would  have  been  of  no  importance 
and  nobody's  business  but  our  own.  We  mention  it  merely  as  one 
of  the  tests  we  have  applied  to  Mr.  SINCLAIR'S  veracity.  By  these 
tests  he  fails  to  establish  a  right  to  a  place  in  THE  TIMES  for  the 
miscellaneous  charges  and  insinuations  against  persons  and  news-  . 
papers  which  he  now  offers.  It  may  be  mildly  interesting  to  watch  Mr, 
LEE  swatting  a  fly,  but  there  is  no  reason  why  any  of  the  spectators 
should  open  his  house  as  a  refuge  for  the  pestiferous  and  defiling  insect. 

As  soon  as  I  had  read  the  above  editorial  I  sent  the  New 
York  "Times"  a  telegraph.  I  should  explain  that  this  was 

21 


before  I  saw  the  New  York  "Call,"  and  I  still  had  the  idea 
that  my  advertisement  must  be  the  cause  of  the  activity  of 
Professor  Lee  and  the  "Times." 

Editor  New  York  "Times": 

Preparing  pamphlet  entitled  "Crimes  of  the  'Times'  "  which  I  intend 
mailing  to  every  college  student,  clergyman,  lawyer  and  editor  in  this 
country.  I  differ  from  you  in  that  I  am  willing  to  give  my  antagonist 
a  hearing.  I  now  give  you  an  opportunity  to  publish  in  the  "Times"  this 
telegram  with  your  answer  before  I  publish  it  in  my  pamphlet.  Question 
one,  did  you  when  you  published  editorial  March  29th  concerning 
"Brass  Check"  know  that  I  had  sent  to  all  liberal  weeklies  an  advertise 
ment  setting  forth  your  refusal  to  publish  my  defense  against  Professor 
Lee's  attack  on  me?  Had  you  read  this  advertisement?  Second,  why 
did  you  confine  your  editorial  to  the  one  incident  which  is  a  question 
of  veracity  between  us,  and  omit  all  mention  of  my  many  charges  of 
journalistic  dishonesty  cited  by  me,  which  are  proven  from  your  own 
columns?  Why,  for  example,  do  you  not  mention  the  incident  set 
forth  on  page  321  of  "Brass  Check"  and  explain  this  to  your  readers? 
Third,  why  do  you  tell  your  readers  that  I  asked  you  "to  give  space  to 
some  thousands  of  words  in  reply  to  Mr.  Lee,"  and  fail  to  let  your 
readers  know  that  my  reply  would  have  occupied  less  than  two 
columns,  and  was  considerably  shorter  than  the  attack  on  me  which  you 
published?  Fourth,  how  can  you  state  that  I  shifted  my  ground  in  the 
matter  of  the  story  of  the  Metropolis  and  the  "Times,"  and  that  "for 
his  positive  statement  in  the  'Brass  Check'  he  now  substitutes  the 
alleged  statement  of  the  publicity  agent  of  a  publishing  house  whose 
name  he  has  forgotten  after  the  lapse  of  fourteen  years"?  I  ask 
how  can  you  dare  to  say  this,  when  you  have  before  you  the  text  of 
my  letter,  which  plainly  states  that  I  myself  saw  with  my  own  eyes 
the  proofs  of  portions  of  the  story,  as  prepared  for  publication  by 
the  "Times."  Fifth,  in  view  of  my  charge  that  you  have  deliberately 
falsified  my  statement  in  this  matter,  will  you  give  your  readers  an 
opportunity  to  read  that  paragraph  from  my  letter  and  judge  what  I 
actually  did  say?  Sixth,  will  you  obtain  and  publish  in  the  "Times"  an 
affidavit  of  the  man  who  was  city  editor  of  the  "Times"  in  1907, 
that  there  was  not  prepared  by  the  "Times"  a  long  news  story_  about 
my  novel,  "The  Metropolis"?  Seventh,  will  you  agree  to  publish  on 
the  editorial  page  of  the  "Times"  statements  of  such  witnesses  as  I 
can  produce  to  substantiate  my  story,  provided  total  space  is  not  more 
than  half  column?  Eighth,  if  you  will  not  publish  this  telegram,  will 
you  explain  why  not?  You  are  authorized  to  wire  five  hundred  words 
at  my  expense,  answering  questions  by  number. 

UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

To  the  above  telegram  the  New  York  "Times"  made  no 
reply.  I  waited  two  days,  and  then  sent  another  telegram,  as 
follows : 

Editor  New  York  "Times": 

Unless  you  wire  immediately,  will  assume  you  refuse  answer 
telegram. — UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

To  this,  likewise,  there  came  no  reply.  I  will  merely  point 
out  that  the  "Times"  has  done  to  me  the  same  thing  that 
"Collier's  Weekly"  did  at  the  very  beginning  of  my  career  ("The 
Brass  Check,"  page  29)  :  discussing  a  letter  in  their  editorial 
columns  while  refusing  publication  of  the  letter;  and  quoting 

22 


only  a  portion  of  the  letter,  and  misrepresenting  that,  actually 
making  me  tell  a  lie  about  myself  !  Turn  back  to  my  letter  to 
the  "Times"  and  read  my  exact  words:  "I  helped  to  get  to 
gether  the  data  for  the  proposed  story,  and  I  saw  the  proofs 
of  portions  of  it  as  scheduled  for  publication ;"  and  compare 
with  this,  the  statement  as  published  in  the  "Times"  editorial : 
"For  his  positive  statement  in  'The  Brass  Check'  he  now  sub 
stitutes  the  alleged  statement  of  the  publicity  agent  of  a  pub 
lishing  house,  whose  name  he  has  forgotten  after  the  lapse  of 
fourteen  years."  The  "Times"  says  that  I  "shifted  my  ground," 
and  that  I  seek  to  put  off  on  an  unnamed  "publicity  agent" 
my  story  of  what  happened  in  the  "Times"  office;  it  com 
ments  :  "The  evidence  he  now  pretends  to  offer  is  obviously 
no  evidence  at  all."  But  what  I  actually  said  was  that  /  saw 
the  proofs — and  what  could  be  more  positive  evidence  than 
that  ?  Anybody  who  knows  anything  about  such  affairs  knows 
that  newspaper  proofs  contain  the  stamp  of  the  newspaper, 
and  are  not  to  be  "faked"  or  mistaken  for  anything  else. 

The  "Times,"  of  course,  assumed  that  it  could  falsify  about 
me  in  this  matter,  because  it  was  a  question  of  veracity  be 
tween  us,  and  all  respectable  people  would  believe  the  "Times." 
But,  as  it  happens,  the  "Times"  has  miscalculated.  I  have  on 
my  desk  a  letter  from  Mr.  W.  D.  Moffat,  at  that  time  presi 
dent  of  Moffat,  Yard  &  Co.,  the  firm  which  published  "The 
Metropolis,"  and  now  editor  of  the  "Mentor,"  116  E.  16th  St., 
New  York.  I  might  mention  that  I  have  not  seen  Mr.  Moffat 
from  that  time  to  this,  nor  have  I  corresponded  with  him,  nor 
had  any  relations  with  him.  He  is  practically  a  stranger  to 
me,  and  I  would  not  know  him  if  I  met  him ;  he  owes  noth 
ing  to  me,  and  is  therefore  as  disinterested  a  witness  as  one 
could  imagine.  He  writes  that  he  does  not  remember  the 
details — naturally  he  would  not,  after  a  lapse  of  fourteen 
years;  but  he  says:  "I  REMEMBER  THE  INCIDENT 
ABOUT  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES'  STORY,  AND  OUR 
CHAGRIN  ON  THE  MORNING  WHEN  WE  EXPECTED 
TO  FIND  THE  STORY  IN  THE  TIMES'  AND  DID  NOT 
FIND  IT." 

I  decided  that,  to  make  the  case  perfect,  I  would  give  the 
'Times"  one  more  chance.  So  on  April  5th  I  sent  this  tele 
gram : 

Editor  New  York  "Times" : 

W.  D.  Moffat,  president  Moffat,  Yard  and  Company,  writes  con 
cerning  Metropolis  story  referred  to  in  your  editorial  March  twenty- 
ninth:  "I  remember  the  incident  about  the  New  York  'Times'  story 
and  our  chagrin  on  the  morning  when  we  expected  to  find  the  story 
in  the  'Times'  and  did  not  find  it."  Here  is  complete  vindication  of 
my^  claim  from  entirely  disinterested  witness.  This  telegram  for  publi 
cation.  Photographic  copy  Moffat's  letter  if  desired.  Wire  collect. — 
UPTON  SINCLAIR. 

23 


To  this,  of  course,  there  was  no  answer.  Later:  I  have 
received  a  telegram  from  Mr.  Robert  Sterling  Yard,  formerly 
a  member  of  the  firm  of  Moffat,  Yard  &  Co.,  afterwards  editor 
of  the  "Century  Magazine,"  and  now  chief  of  the  Educational 
Section  of  the  Government's  National  Park  Service.  Mr. 
Yard's  telegram  reads: 

"I  recall  article  was  prepared  about  'Metropolis'  for 
'Times'  to  publish,  but  that  it  was  not  published,  which  greatly 
disappointed  us  all." 

I  now  go  on  to  Professor  Lee,  whose  letter  follows  in  full : 

NEW  YORK  UNIVERSITY 

School  of  Commerce 

Accounts  and  Finance 

Washington  Square,  New  York 

Department  of  Journalism  March  23,  1921. 

My  dear  Mr,  Sinclair: 

Your  registered  letter  and  your  telegram  have  reached  my  desk. 
I  have  been  simply  swamped  with  letters  about  my  address  and  they 
are  still  coming  in.  The  report  of  the  speech  in  The  New  York  "Times" 
brought  me  over  200  communications,  and  in  almost  every  instance  the 
writer  expected  a  reply. 

I  will  take  time,  however,  to  say  a  few  words  about  my  speech. 
As  a  special  courtesy  to  one  of  my  students  who  is  a  Socialist  I  went 
over  to  Brooklyn  where  I  discussed  "The  Brass  Check."  I  took  this 
book  up  chapter  by  chapter  and  told  what  the  various  men  mentioned 
in  the  book  had  related  to  me  about  the  incidents  mentioned  therein. 
I  made  no  deductions  myself  but  left  the  audience  to  decide  for  them 
selves  whether  it  would  accept  your  word  or  the  word  of  Norman 
Hapgood,  William  W.  Harris,  Rowsey  who  was  in  Denver  at  the  time 
you  filed  your  version,  Sophie  Kerr  Underwood,  John  S.  Phillips,  a 
relative  of  Miss  Branch,  Mr.  Van  Anda  of  the  "Times''  etc. 

I  shall  be  very  glad  to  receive  from  you  any  proofs  why  I  should 
accept  your  word  rather  than  their  word.  Frankly  it  seems  to  me  that 
"The  Brass  Check"  contains  no  documentary  evidence  in  your  favor. 

The  journal  of  Peter  Stirling  in  my  opinion  has  a  direct  value  as  to 
the  reliability  of  its  writer  when  put  on  the  witness  stand.  Do  you 
take  exception  to  this  point? 

I  haven't  space  to  go  into  detail  but  I  should  like  to  be  shown 
why  your  telegram  to  the  president  is  not  libel.  Every  lawyer  to 
whom  I  have  shown  it  says  it  is  libclous  per  se.  It  may  have  been 
untrue,  but  what  evidence  do  you  give  that  the  governor  was  wilfully 
and  deliberately  trying  to  deceive?  No  proof  is  given  in  "The  Brass 
Check." 

Does  or  does  not  the  printed  caption  of  the  resolution  contain  the 
word  "mediation"?  This  seems  to  me  a  most  vital  point  in  any  dis 
cussion.  The  official  records  of  Colorado  will  give  the  answer. 

Djd  the  Associated  Press  story  use  the  word  "mediation"  or  did 
it  say  it  was  an  advisory  committee? 

Surely  you  cannot  expect  me  in  a  letter  to  repeat  what  I  said  in 
a  two  and  a  half  hour  address.  I  should  like  to  see  one  specific  case 
where  the  department  stores  of  New  York  City  have  actually  kept  an 
item  out  of  the  New  York  papers.  I  have  had  no  facts  with  proof  as 

24 


yet.  I  have  sent  my  students  on  numerous  wild-goose  chases  to  run 
down  stories  about  suppression,  but  I  have  never  found  any  items  of 
truth. 

I  notice  that  you  send  me  a  letter  by  registered  mail.  Have  you 
any  positive  proof  to  show  that  you  ever  sent  a  letter  requesting  the 
Associated  Press  to  correct  its  assertion  that  your  wife  had  been 
arrested?  I  have  seen  several  Associated  Press  reports  which  said  that 
your  wife  was  on  the  street.  This  fact  certainly  does  not  indicate 
that  she  was  in  jail. 

Anyone  will  tell  you  that  the  burden  of  proof  is  upon  the  affirmative 
and  not  upon  the  negative.  In  other  words,  you  must  show  that  you 
made  the  request.  The  Associated  Press  does  not  have  proof;  it  did 
not  receive  it.  If  you  have  anything  to  show  you  sent  a  denial  to  the 
Associated  Press,  I  should  be  glad  to  have  the  facts. 

I  am  very  familiar  with  "Fakes  in  American  Journalism."  Its 
author  was  one  of  my  students  and  its  first  edition  was  a  thesis  turned  in 
to  me  in  my  history  of  American  journalism  class.  As  I  remember 
it  I  gave  the  author  a  fairly  good  mark.  If  I  had  time  I  could 
indicate  how  I  think  the  book  proves  something  quite  different  from 
what  you  indicate  in  "The  Brass  Check." 

Please  bear  in  mind  that  I  have  no  personal  feelings  in  this  matter. 
I  am  a  constructive  critic  of  the  press  myself.  I  think  a  serious  book 
dealing  with  the  faults  of  the  American  newspapers  is  sadly  needed 
at  the  present  time. 

Don't  you  think  that  in  case  of  conflicting  stories  of  two  different 
people  one  has  a  right  to  ask  for  evidence  as  to  which  one  should  be 
believed  ?  This  is  the  point  I  hoped  you  would  answer,  but  it  is  one 
of  the  points  which  you  did  not  even  mention  in  your  letter. 

John  Haynes  Holmes  wrote  me  a  long  letter  in  which  he  said  the 
"Times"  only  printed  what  it  wanted  to  print.  Is  not  the  same  thing 
true  of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Holmes?  Does  he  not  preach  what  he  wants 
to  preach?  Don't  you  write  what  you  want  to  write?  Don't  I  teach 
what  I  want  to  teach? 

It  seemed  to  me  that'  almost  everyone  in  my  audience  had  a  copy 
of  "The  Brass  Check."  For  that  reason  I  felt  very  free  to  be  specific 
in  my  criticism. 

In  conclusion  I  want  to  remark  that  I  think  I  have  a  fairly  broad 
point  of  view  and  I  think  my  Socialist  students  will  admit  this.  You 
are  at  perfect  liberty  to  write  to  the  daughter  of  Morris  Hillquit  who 
was  in  my  class  last  year. 

But  for  the  pressure  on  my  time  I  should  be  very  glad  to  go  more 
into  detail  on  any  of  these  points.  The  one  thing  I  should  like  to  have 
from  you  is  the  answer  to  the  question  raised  in  one  of  the  first 
paragraphs  of  this  letter ;  why  I  should  take  your  word  rather  than  the 
word  of  Norman  Hapgood,  John  S.  Phillips,  W.  W.  Harris,  etc. 

I   am   simply  after   the   truth   in   all   matters   relating  to   American 
journalism.     No  one  is  more  conscious  of  its   faults  than  I.     On  the 
other  hand,  I  think  I  am  fairly  familiar  with  its  merits. 
Very  truly  yours, 

(signed)  JAS.  MELVIN  LEE, 
Director  Department  of  Journalism  New  York  Univ. 

Professor  James  Melvin  Lee  April  4,   1921. 

Dear  Sir : 

I  have  your  letter  and  your  answer  to  my  telegram  of  April  2d, 
stating  that  you  knew  nothing  of  my  advertisement.  I  note  that  you 
leave  unanswered  my  telegram  of  April  3d,  asking  if  you  had  read  the 
article  in  the  New  York  "Call"  of  March  26th.  Your  silence  compels 
me  to  assume  that  you  had  read  the  article.  I  note  that  you  do  not 

25 


accept  my  invitation  to  explain  the  discrepancy  of  six  days  between 
the  date  of  your  letter  and  the  postmark  on  the  envelope. 

I  will  now  tell  you  how  this  whole  matter  appears  to  me.  You 
provided  the  New  York  "Times"  with  material  for  an  attack  upon 
my  book  and  a  defense  of  itself.  An  article  was  prepared  by  the 
"Times"  to  seem  as  damaging  as  possible  to  me,  and  as  favorable 
as  possible  to  the  "Times" — and  so  obviously  dishonest  that  you,  in  a 
conversation  reported  to  me  by  Mr.  Oswald  Garrison  Villard,  did  not 
dare  to  defend  it,  but  took  refuge  in  the  statement  that  the  "Times" 
had  only  quoted  those  portions  of  your  address  which  were  favorable 
to  it,  and  to  American  journalism  in  general,  and  had  omitted  to  mention 
all  your  unfavorable  comments.  But  when  I  wrote  to  you,  asking  you 
to  see  fair  play  between  the  "Times"  and  myself,  you  ignored  my  letter; 
and  even  now,  when  I  have  succeeded  in  getting  a  belated  reply,  you 
entirely  ignore  that  fundamental  point.  You  do  not  meet  my  request 
to  say  what  you  think  of  the  conduct  of  the  "Times,"  either  its  one 
sided  report  of  your  address,  or  its  refusal  to  publish  my  answer.  My 
letter  to  the  "Times"  was  complete,  covering  every  point  they  had 
raised ;  and  it  was  submitted  to  you  as  a  test  of  your  sense  of  honor  and 
fair  play.  You  "flunked"  the  test.  You  not  merely  ignored  my  letter, 
but  you  ignored  my  telegram  of  March  16th,  with  its  specific  request 
for  a  telegram  at  my  expense.  You  thought  I  was  helpless,  and  must 
submit  to  whatever  treatment  you  and  the  "Times"  saw  fit  to  deal 
out  to  me. 

But  suddenly  you  discovered  that  you  were  to  be  branded  before 
your  students  as  a  man  without  regard  for  fair  play;  and  so  both  you 
and  the  "Times"  came  down  from  your  perch  of  dignity.  The  "Times" 
quoted  from  my  letter,  which  it  refuses  to  publish,  distorting  the 
quotation,  so  as  to  make  me  in  effect  say  something  I  did  not  say. 
After  which  it  went  back  to  its  perch  of  dignity,  and  refuses  to  pay 
any  attention  to  my  telegrams  of  protest. 

And  what  did  you  do?  Having  for  nineteen  days  had  my  letter 
lying  on  your  desk,  you  finally  make  a  reply  in  which,  with  the  bland 
deftness  of  a  prestidigitator,  you  evade  the  subject  of  the  delay.  You 
say:  "The  report  of  my  speech  in  the  New  York  'Times'  brought  me 
over  two  hundred  communications,  and  in  almost  every  instance  the 
writer  expected  a  reply."  Did  he  get  a  reply?  Or  did  he  wait  nineteen 
days  for  it?  You  do  not  say,  but  leave  us  with  a  picture  of  yourself, 
buried  in  the  task  of  answering  your  two  hundred  correspondents. 
But  I  ask  you,  what  did  you  owe  to  the  writers  of  these  two  hundred 
letters,  that  you  should  have  kept  me  waiting?  Had  you  slandered 
any  of  them  before  the  world?  Had  you  misrepresented  their  pub 
lished  writings  ?  No,  you  had  not.  You  owed  them  courtesy — nothing 
more ;  but  to  me  you  owed  the  heaviest  debt  that  one  man  can  owe  to 
another,  and  if  you  had  been  a  man  of  honor,  you  surely  would  have 
sat  up  at  night  to  write  a  letter  to  the  "Times,"  asking  them  to  publish 
my  defense,  and  at  the  same  time  wiring  me  that  you  had  taken  this 
stand  for  decency  in  controversy. 

However,  you  have  now  got  round  to  answering  my  letter,  and 
what  do  you  say?  You  proceed  to  ignore  most  of  my  questions — every 
single  one  which  depends  upon  documentary  evidence,  and  can  be 
proven  from  the  files  of  the  "Times."  You  proceed  to  drag  across  the 
scent  a  whole  shoal  of  red  herrings — beginning  with  the  names  of 
seven  people  who  you  say  contradict  me,  though  you  do  not  tell  me 
a  single  word  they  say.  It  is  hard  to  deal  with  such  a  form  of  argu 
ment  ;  but  I  will  dp  my  best. 

I  begin  by  asking,  why  have  those  people  not  come  forward  and 
stated  publicly  their  exceptions  to  my  book?  The  book  has  now  been 
before  the  public  for  fourteen  months  ;  more  than  125,000  copies  have 
been  sold,  it  is  the  most  talked  of  book  in  America,  and  is  being  trans 
lated  into  a  dozen  foreign  languages.  During  the  whole  fourteen 

26 


months  the  entire  capitalist  press  of  the  country  has  been  at  the  disposal 
of  anyone  who  had  a  charge  to  bring  against  the  book ;  yet  not  one 
single  person  has  come  forward  and  stated  publicly  over  his  own 
signature  that  I  have  made  a  false  statement  about  him  in  "The  Brass 
Check" !  There  seems  to  me  something  comical  about  the  procedure 
of  the  several  people  you  name — and  I  know  not  how  many  others  who 
are  covered  by  your  phrase  "etc" — stealthily  approaching  a  college  pro 
fessor  and  telling  him  their  complaints  against  my  book,  and  he  telling 
them  to  a  Brownsville  labor  audience,  and  not  even  the  brave  New 
York  "Times"  daring  to  print  what  is  said. 

I  will  take  up  these  persons  one  by  one : 

(a)  Norman  Hapgood.     In  naming  him  you  commit  what   I   am 
forced  to  call  a  dishonesty,  in  that  you   fail  to  mention  that  in  "The 
Brass    Check"    I    plainly    state    (page   25)    that    Hapgood    denies    my 
story.     I   thus   give   the   reader    full   opportunity   to   decide    whom   he 
wishes  to  believe,  and  I  do  the  very  thing  you  challenge  me  to  do — 
that  is,  I  state  why  the  reader  should  believe  me  instead  of  Hapgood. 
This  is  only  one  more  illustration  of  your  invariable  method  of  calling 
for  something  which  is  in  my  book.     For  you  to  do  that  before  the 
Brownsville  Labor  Forum  was  clever;  but  for  you  to  do  it  in  writing 
to  me  is  merely  silly,  because  I  know  what  is  in  my  book. 

(b)  William    W.    Harris.     This    gentleman    is    defending   his    in 
tegrity  as  an  editor  of  the  New  York  "Herald"  ("Brass  Check"  Chap. 
VIII)  ;  but  he  had  better  be  careful  what  he  says  in  print,  for  I  have 
the  documents,  and  think  I  can  also  get  the  testimony  of  Mrs.   Ella 
Reeve  Bloor.     The  New  York  "Herald"  once  paid  me  $2,500  damages 
for  libel  (page  189),  and  I  presume  does  not  want  to  pay  any  more. 

(c)  Mr.   A.   C.   Rowsey.     I   would  be   greatly  interested   to  know 
what  he  has  told  you.    Mr.  Rowsey  wrote  to  me,  and  made  no  complaint 
whatever  as  to  the  story  I  had  told   (page  166).     He  said  he  thought 
the  position  he  had  filled  on  the  Associated   Press  would  enable  him 
to  write  a  very  important  book,  and  he  asked  my  assistance. 

(d)  Sophie   Kerr   Underwood.     I   know   nothing  about   this   lady, 
save  that  she  is  the  author  of  what  I  have  called  "the  vilest  piece  of 
innuendo  in  American  political  history"    (page  336).     I   said  nothing 
save   what   is   revealed   by  the   internal   evidence   of   her   story.     Does 
she  deny  that  the  story  refers  to  Woodrow  Wilson,  and  was  so  under 
stood  by  the  public? 

(e)  John    S.    Phillips.     Here    is   an   honest   gentleman,    who   was 
kicked  out  of  the  American  Magazine,  because  he  retained  some  of  his 
idealism.     It  is  possible  that  his  memory  may  differ  from  mine  con 
cerning  some  details   of   what  I  have  told  in   "The   Brass   Check";    I 
hope  he  will  not  trust  to  his  memory,  but  will  look  up  the  documents, 
because  I  have  done  so  (page  81). 

(f)  A   relative   of   Miss   Branch.     You   produce  the   relative,   and 
then  I  may  produce  Miss  Branch   (Chap.  XXIII). 

(g)  Mr.  Van  Anda  of  the  "Times."     I  spent  a  summer  vacation 
next  door  to  this  gentleman  and  know  him  quite  well.     I  am  sorry  to 
have  to  quarrel  with  him,  but  he  is  the  managing  editor  of  the  "Times," 
responsible   for   its   policies,   and   he   deliberately   subordinates   himself 
to  the  interests  of  big  business,  and  betrays  the  welfare  of  the  public. 
I  have  exposed  what  he  has  done,  mainly  by  quoting  from  the   files 
of    his    paper.     Naturally,    he    defends    himself,    and    naturally,    he    is 
very  careful  not  to  mention  the  vast  bulk  of  my  charges,  consisting 
of  quotations  from  the  "Times."     I  can  understand  why  he  should  do 
this ;  but  I  cannot  understand  why  you  should  follow  his  example. 

27 


This  completes  your  list,  except  for  the  "etc.,"  with  which  I  cannot 
deal,  and  which,  therefore,  seems  to  me  a  trifle  unfair.  In  as  much 
as  you  lay  such  particular  stress  upon  the  question  why  you  should 
believe  me  instead  of  these  people — coming  back  to  the  question  and 
repeating  it  at  the  end  of  your  letter — I  will  give  you  three  specific 
reasons,  as  follows : 

First,  because  I  have  stated  my  charges  in  writing,  over  my  signature, 
and  these  people  have  not  done  the  same.  I  am  responsible  for  what 
I  have  written,  but  they  are  not  responsible  for  what  you  hint 

Second,  because  for  sixteen  years  I  have  been  systematically  ex 
posing  special  privilege  in  this  country;  I  have  attacked  most  of  the 
powerful  forces  which  control  the  country,  and  my  enemies  have  had 
every  resource  of  wealth,  prestige,  and  publicity;  yet  not  one  of  them 
has  ever  proven  a  falsehood  against  me,  nor  even  gone  so  far  as  to  file 
a  libel  suit  against  me. 

Third,  because,  with  the  possible  exception  of  the  unnamed  relative 
of  Miss  Branch,  all  the  persons  you  name  have  had  a  personal  and 
financial  interest  to  defend  against  me;  whereas  I,  in  every  case,  was 
defending  a  public  interest,  and  at  heavy  financial  sacrifice.  You  will 
say,  no  doubt,  that  I  have  a  financial  interest  in  defending  "The  Brass 
Check";  therefore  I  will  state  that  in  publishing  this  book  I  have 
handled,  so  far,  over  a  hundred  thousand  dollars,  and  not  one  penny 
of  it  has  stayed  with  me.  I  have  sold  the  books  at  so  low  a  price  that 
there  has  been  practically  no  surplus,  and  what  there  might  have  been 
has  gone  to  breaking  the  newspaper  boycott  of  the  book.  For  example, 
it  cost  me  $750  in  advertising  to  force  the  "Weekly  Review"  to  make  a 
public  admission  that  it  had  published  a  false  charge  against  me,  while 
having  the  documentary  evidence  in  its  possession.  (See  the  "Weekly 
Review,"  March  30,  1921,  page  287;  also  the  "New  Republic,"  March 
30th,  page  135.)  I  spent  $600  in  advertising,  in  order  to  get  a  letter  from 
you,  and  I  expect  to  spend  one  or  two  thousand  in  circulating  this 
pamphlet.  What  I  have  done  is  to  give  the  world  a  book  of  truth, 
and  I  have  also  given  for  sixteen  months,  without  compensation,  my 
services  as  publisher,  manager,  and  advertising  writer,  and  my  wife 
has  given  her  services  as  janitor's  assistant,  critic,  and  terrified  raiser 
of  funds. 

To  take  the  rest  of  your  letter,  paragraph  by  paragraph : 

By  "the  journal  of  Peter'  Stirling"  you  doubtless  mean  my  book 
"The  Journal  of  Arthur  Stirling."  I  have  already  answered  this  ques 
tion  elaborately  in  my  letter  to  the  "Times."  Since  you  ask  it  again,  I 
answer  again.  I  think  that  to  quote  a  harmless  joke  perpetrated  by  a 
youth  of  22  as  a  reason  for  evading  all  the  mass  of  documents  in  "The 
Brass  Check"  is  to  prove  yourself  desperately  hard  put  for  a  basis 
of  attack  upon  me. 

You  say :  "I  should  like  to  be  shown  why  your  telegram  to  the  presi 
dent  is  not  libel."  By  this  you  make  yourself  ridiculous,  for  in  my 
letter  to  the  "Times"  I  plainly  state :  "No  doubt  it  is  libelous  if  it  is 
false."  Again  you  ask :  "What  evidence  do  you  give  that  the  governor 
was  wilfully  and  deliberately  trying  to  deceive?  No  proof  is  given  in 
'The  Brass  Check.'  "  Here  again  you  show  that  you  cannot  recall  the 
simplest  statements  in  my  book.  The  evidence  I  give  is  that  I  at,  once 
wrote  the  governor,  pointing  out  the  falsity  of  his  statements  to  the 
president,  and  proving  it  by  the  public  document.  His  reply  was  to 
abuse  me  as  a  "prevaricator,"  and  to  substitute  for  his  false  statement 
another  statement  equally  false.  Every  bit  of  this  is  fully  quoted  in 
my  book  (page  162)  ;  yet  you  declare :  "No  proof  is  given  in  The  Brass 
Check'  " ! 

Neither  in  the  caption  nor  in  the  text  of  the  resolution  does  the  word 
"mediation"  occur  (page  158).  Why  do  you  ask  me  this  question,  when 
by  a  telegram  to  the  librarian  of  the  state  library  at  Denver  you  might 

28 


have  made  sure  in  a  couple  of  hours?  It  seems  to  me  that  you  are 
here  aggressively  pretending  to  have  something  important  to  say,  in. 
order  to  conceal  the  fact  that  you  have  nothing  at  all. 

Next,  the  Associated  Press  sent  out  Governor  Ammon's  telegram,, 
which  contained  the  word  "mediation"  (page  160).  And  I  myself  took 
the  copy  of  the  House  Journal  to  the  Associated  Press  representative 
and  showed  him  that  the  governor's  telegram  to  the  president  was  a 
lie  (page  166).  I  also  showed  him  that  he  might  handle  the  story 
without  mentioning  me  (pages  169-70).  He  might  quote  the  Rocky 
Mountain  News,  which  had  the  whole  story  and  published  it  (page 
161).  Would  he  have  been  committing  libel  then?  Would  he  have 
committed  libel  if  he  had  quoted  the  official  proceedings  of  the  state 
senate,  where  Senator  Helen  Ring  Robinson  had  exposed  the  infamy 
(page  157)  ?  Do  you  not  see,  sir,  how  impossible  it  is  for  me  to  believe 
in  your  good  faith,  when  you  persist  in  overlooking  all  these  facts,, 
which  are  fully  given  and  explained  in  minute  detail  in  "The  Brass 
Check"? 

Next  you  ask  for  evidence  concerning  department  stores — following 
your  usual  procedure  of  blandly  overlooking  the  evidence  provided  in 
my  letter  to  the  "Times." 

Next  you  ask :  "Have  you  positive  proof  to  show  that  you  ever 
sent  a  letter  requesting  the  Associated  Press  to  correct  its  assertion 
that  your  wife  had  been  arrested"?  I  answer  yes.  I  have  the  testi 
mony  of  witnesses,  in  whose  presence  my  wife  placed  in  the  hands  of  the 
Western  Union  messenger  boy  a  letter  to  the  City  Editor  of  the  Asso 
ciated  Press.  This  letter  was  sent  in  great  haste,  upon  receipt  by  my 
wife  of  an  anguished  telegram  from  her  mother  in  Mississippi.  At 
that  time  my  wife  had  no  idea  but  that  the  Associated  Press  would 
correct  the  false  statement.  Later,  desiring  to  make  a  legal  case,  a 
second  demand  was  sent  by  registered  mail.  This  case  was  very  care 
fully  prepared  under  the  direction  of  a  well  known  lawyer  of  New  York, 
who  assured  my  wife  that  she  could  without  question  collect  heavy 
damages  from  the  Associated  Press.  I  have  a  clipping  from  the  Norfolk, 
Virginia,  Ledger  Despatch,  April  30,  1915,  bearing  the  Associated 
Press  caption  and  stating  that  every  paper  in  the  South  which  had 
printed  the  libel  was  being  sued  for  from  ten  to  fifty  thousand  dollars 
damages.  The  Associated  Press  itself  would  have  had  to  defend  these 
suits,  therefore  you  can  judge  of  the  likelihood  of  their  not  hearing  about 
the  matter.  It  is  amusing  to  note  that  not  even  when  these  suits  were 
filed  did  the  Associated  Press  see  fit  to  correct  its  lie !  Yet  you  blandly 
argue  that  the  Associated  Press  was  never  notified;  and  it  throws  an 
amusing  light  on  your  point  of  view,  that  you  accept  the  statements 
of  the  Associated  Press  without  question.  You  do  not  say  that  the 
Associated  Press  informs  you,  or  that  it  denies  having  received  a 
letter;  you  say:  "The  Associated  Press  does  not  have  proof;  it  did 
not  receive  it." 

Also  you  say :  "I  have  seen  several  Associated  Press  reports  which 
said  that  your  wife  was  on  the  street.  This  fact  certainly  does  not 
indicate  that  she  was  in  jail."  No;  it  does  not  indicate  anything  about 
the  matter,  one  way  or  the  other.  I  myself  was  in  jail,  and  then  went 
on  the  street  again,  as  I  plainly  stated  in  my  story  (pages  147-9).  The 
only  possible  point  to  this  inquiry  is  that  you  question  whether  the 
Associated  Press  sent  out  a  report  that  my  wife  was  arrested.  Ac 
cordingly  I  have  taken  the  trouble  to  dig  through  a  score  of  boxes 
of  old  papers,  and  I  am  sending  to  my  New  York  office,  by  registered 
mail,  a  copy  of  the  Oklahoma  City  "Times"  for  April  29,  1914.  You 
will  note  that  this  paper  bears  under  its  headline,  the  caption,  "Exclusive 
Associated  Press  Report."  You  will  also  note  the  article  stating  that 
my  wife  was  arrested.  If  you  will  call  at  my  New  York  office,  No.  3 
East  14th  Street,  Room  403,  at  any  time  during  office  hours,  this  paper 

29 


will  be  submitted  to  your  inspection.  It  is  one  of  thirty  Associated 
Press  papers  in  my  possession  carrying  this  libel. 

Next  you  ask :  "Don't  you  think  that  in  case  of  conflicting  stories 
one  has  a  right  to  ask  for  evidence  as  to  which  one  should  be  believed?" 
I  answer  yes,  of  course ;  but  when  one  calls  for  evidence,  and  it  is 
furnished,  one  has  ho  right  to  ignore  it,  and  to  go  on  calling  for  it 
over  and  over. 

Next  you  ask  if  John  Haynes  Holmes  does  not  preach  what  he 
wants  to  preach.  That  is  a  matter  of  another  man's  psychology.  My 
guess  is  that  Dr.  Holmes  preaches  what  his  conscience  and  concern  for 
public  welfare  compel  him  to  preach.  You  ask  if  I  do  not  write  what  I 
want  to  write,  and  here  I  can  answer  positively:  NO.  What  I  want  to 
write,  and  have  all  my  life  wanted  to  write,  is  a  blank  verse  tragedy; 
what  I  actually  write  is  advertisements  and  pamphlets  attacking  servants 
of  privilege  in  high  public  station.  You  ask,  referring  to  yourself: 
"Don't  I  teach  what  I  want  to  teach?"  I  answer,  maybe  so;  there 
are  horses  that  stand  without  hitching.  I  can  say  this  positively :  Your 
argument  that  the  "Times"  is  justified  in  "only  printing  what  it  wants 
to  print"  shows  that  you  have  no  remotest  idea  of  the  responsibilities 
of  a  great  newspaper  as  a  servant  of  the  public  welfare,  and  are  there 
fore  wholly  unfitted  to  teach  the  ethics  of  journalism  to  classes  of 
young  men  and  women. 

Finally,  in  bidding  you  farewell,  I  sum  the  matter  up :  Anyone 
may  go  over  your  attack  on  me,  as  quoted  by  the  "Times,"  and  then  go 
over  my  answer  to  the  "Times,"  and  check  it  up  point  by  point,  and 
see  that  I  have  not  dodged  a  single  issue.  Likewise,  anyone  may  go 
over  your  letter  to  me,  and  this  present  reply,  and  see  that  I  have 
carefully  dealt  with  every  single  point  that  you  raise.  But  you  have 
read  "The  Brass  Check,"  and  passed  over  everything  in  it  that  did  not 
suit  your  purpose;  you  have  read  my  letter  to  the  "Times,"  and  done 
the  same  thing  again.  This  is  a  fact,  and  anyone  can  see  that  it  is  a 
fact,  and  it  is  the  last  word  I  have  to  say,  either  to  you  or  about  you. 

Yours  truly 


LEE  FINDS   NEW  YORK  PAPERS   FEARLESS 

UNIVERSITY  PROFESSOR'S  CHALLENGES  TO  PROVE  CASE  OF  AD 
VERTISING  CONTROL  NOT  MET 

No  NEWS  Is  SUPPRESSED 

PROPAGANDA    OMITTED    AND    COMPLAINTS    RECEIVED    GENERALLY 
REFER  TO  THIS 

Dr.  James  Melvin  Lee,  Director  of  the  Department  of 
Journalism  at  New  York  University,  spoke  last  night  at  the 
University  Settlement  on  "The  Making  of  a  Newspaper." 

He  traced  the  history  of  newspaper  making  forward  from 

30 


wmcn  occurred,  in  his  belief,  when  Julius  Caesar 
i  ic  Roman  Senate  to  publish  its  acts  in  red  letters  on 
a  white •  bulletin  board.  This  publication,  \vuich  was  entitled 
"'The  Daily  Acts,"  had  a  beneficial  cilect  on  the  Senate,  accord 
ing  to  i>r  T.PP. 

Dr.  Lee  said  that  newspapers  were  corrupt  in  some  cities 
in  the  United  States  and  that  they  had  a  fault  of  printing  too 
much  propaganda  everywhere,  but  of  New  York  newspapers 
he  said : 

"I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying,  as  far  as  New  York  papers 
are  concerned,  that  they  are  independent  and  absolutely  fear 
less." 

Dr.  Lee,  who  had  in  an  address  several  weeks  ago  on  "The 
Brass  Check"  challenged  anyone  to  furnish  evidence  that  New 
York  newspapers  had  suppressed  any  item  at  the  request  or 
command  of  advertisers,  said  last  night  after  the  meeting  that 
his  challenge  had  not  been  met. 

"I  have  received  more  than  two  hundred  letters  from  per 
sons  who  read  the  report  of  that  lecture  in  THE  NEW  YORK 
TIMES,"!  he  said,  "and  some  of  them  contain  interesting  state 
ments,  l^ut  none  of  them  offers  evidence  of  the  suppression 
of  news  by  a  New  York  newspaper  at  the  dictation  of  adver 
tisers. 

"I  have  received  charges  that  this,  that  or  the  other  thing 
was  suppressed,  but,  as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  discover, 
the  matl.er  which  has  been  omitted  from  the  newspapers  was 
not  news  but  propaganda. 

"For  instance,  I  have 'received  many  and  bitter  letters  from 
Jews,  asserting  that  THE  NEW  YORK  TIMES  suppressed  news 
about  the  persecution  of  Jews  in  Poland.  I  think  what  prob 
ably  happened  was  that  the  news  was  printed  but, some  of  the 
propaganda  was  not.  Persons  who  are  interested  in  a  par 
ticular  cause  and  do  not  find  all  they  want  to  read  about  it 
in  the  newspapers  sometimes  find  fault  unjustly." 

Arguing  that  suppression  of  news  usually  had  an  effect 
contrary  to  that  intended  and  insured  wide  and  long-continued 
circulation  for  the  news  suppressed,  he  said  that  the  Phila 
delphia  newspapers  had  suppressed  an  item  about  a  depart- 
inent  store,  which  would  have  been  forgotten  in  two  days  by 
tht  whole  public  if  the  item  had  been  duly  printed. 

"What  was  the  result  of  the  suppression?  I  was  lecturing 
on  journalism  before  University  of  California,  and  at  the 
end  a  m^h  asked  me  about  that  case.  When  I  was  in  Tuscon, 
a  man  who  learned  that  I  was  interested  in  journalism  asked 
me  about  it.  When  I  was  in  Canada  on  a  vacation,  a  man 
who  heard  I  was  a  teacher  of  journalism  asked  me  about  it. 
It  woul<l  never  have  been  heard  of  outside  of  Philadelphia 
except  ft?r  being  suppressed." 

31 


This  is  the  advertisement  which  the  i>ew  ±ork     A**^s*'  r 


Who  Owns  the  Press  and  Wh /? 

When  you  read  your  daily  paper,  are  you 
reading  facts  or  propaganda?  And  whose 
propaganda? 

Who  furnishes  the  raw  material  for  your 
thoughts  about  life  ?  Is  it  honest  material  ? 
No  man  can  ask  more  important  questions 
than  these ;  and  here  for  the  first  time  the 
questions  are  answered  in  a  book. 

THE  BRASS  CHECK 

A  STUDY  OF  AMERICAN  JOURNALISM 

By 
UPTON  SINCLAIR 

Ninth  edition  just  sent  to  press — n  total  of  144,000  copies 

"The  Brass  Check"  is  a  book  of  facts ;  a  book  packed  sol  d 
with  facts.  Says  the  introduction: 

"Here  are  names,  places,  dates — such  a  mass  of  material 
as  you  cannot  doubt,  you  cannot  evade.  Here  are  your 
sacred  names,  the  very  highest  of  your  gods.  When  you 
have  read  this  story,  you  will  know  the  thing  called  Amer 
ican  Journalism;  you  will  know  the  body  and  soul  of  it*" 

Says  Robert  Herrick:     "I  wish  to  thank  you  and  congratulate  you," 

Says    Charles    Zueblin:      "'The    Brass    Check'    ought    to    rai*e    ihe 

roof!"    (It  has  done  so.) 

Says    John    Haynes    Holmes:      "The    took    is    tremendous. 

never  read  a  more  strongly  consistent  argument  or  one  so  formidably 

buttressed    by    facts.      You    have    proved   your    case    to   the    hand  I  °. 

I  again  take  satisfaction  in  saluting  yovt  not  only  as  a  great  novel-sU 

but    as    the    ablest    pamphleteer    in    America    today.      I    am    alrenj4F 

passing  around   the   word   in   my  church   and   taking  orders   for    t'ie 

book." 

Says  the  "Nation"    (New  York) :     "A  most  important  book  .  .  .  .   <l 

fascinating  and   thorough   treatise   upon   the  American   Press." 

Says  the  "Nation"   (London)  :     "This  astonishing,  production  .  .  .   • 

a   highly  curious   record  ....  a  telling  array   of  evidence  ....   a 

plain    factual    record." 

Says  the  "Neues  Journal"   (Vienna):     "A  book-trade  'scoop'  without 

equal  ....  a   breath-taking,    clutching,    frightful    book." 

448  pages.     Single  copy,  paper,   SO  cents  postpaid;   three 
copies,  $1.50;  ten  copies,'  $4.50.     Single  copy,  cloth,  $1. 
postpaid;  three  copies,  J&.OO;  ten  copies,  $9.00. 

-Address  — 

UPTON  SINCLAIR 

PASADENA  '-  -  CALIFORNIA 


GAYLAMOUN1 

PAMPHLET  UNDER 


OF  CALIFORNIA  Lib 


